


Where Ugly Was a Colour

by AshToSilver



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, Child Abuse, Dark!Bruce, Detectives, Explicit Language, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mental Illness, Superhero Plans, Violence, animal cruelty, perfect match, plot without porn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-26
Updated: 2013-06-24
Packaged: 2017-12-09 13:52:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 22,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/774943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AshToSilver/pseuds/AshToSilver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce Wayne was born wrong, born terribly, terribly wrong. Thankfully, he's not alone in this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is an Alternate Universe set around the idea that Bruce Wayne and Jack Napier know each other, and have an established relationship. I am mostly using a modified comic 'verse for designs, with some flair of my own and I can't really say where the plot or universe as a whole is going. Consider this something of a character study with cases and sexless romance thrown throughout. (Sorry guys, keeping this teen rated.) If all goes according to plan, this is going to be a monster of a fic.
> 
> EDIT: Chapters are being written to bring the whole thing a bit more up in quality. Some will be rewritten more then others. After I'm done that, I'll start updating again.
> 
> EDIT AGAIN: Where Ugly Was a Colour has been abandoned for now - I may rewrite it at some point, but for now there is no hope of updates.
> 
>  **EDIT Aug/2016:** I have changed my username, I am now going by AshToSilver on AO3 and [my new Tumblr](http://ashtosilver.tumblr.com/)! You can still call me Alex, but I no longer have a day of the week in my name.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has been rewritten and is hopefully better.

It all started with the bats.

In his youth, Bruce Wayne had watched them fly over the grounds, small squeaks keeping him awake no matter how far away they were. A fear sickened him whenever he saw their forms against the distant lights of Gotham and with his fear came something worst, a craving, an itch he couldn’t scratch.

Bruce knew he had been born wrong.

He was subtly different – enough to drive other children away, make adults’ smiles freeze on their faces. Alfred gave him looks of anger mixed with disappointed (though Bruce suspected that the anger was never really directed at him) and his parents always looked sad, as if they had failed.

This wrongness possessed him, unsettled him as much as the bats did. Made him feel as if he'd been set at an uneven angle, forever left to leave awkwardly.

One night the strangeness overtook him, altered his dreams and drove him to pace the floor, barely six years old. He could feel it growing like a fever, too big for his head, splitting his skull in an attempt to escape.

Finally, he could take it no longer. He took a small blanket off his bed and a knife from the kitchen when he left out the back door.

He walked all the way to the tree line, his bare feet slippery with dew and the hem of his pants quickly growing soaked. There he waited, heart beating so loud he thought it would burst, toes curling in the cold grass.

When they came racing past, their small black bodies almost freezing him in place, he swept his blanket through the air until he caught one.

And he tore it to pieces, splintering bone and skin beneath nail and knife, its cries sending the others into frenzy.

The body rested next to a large oak for ages and he returned to the same spot for many months, the mangled corpse stirring something deep inside of him, washing a wave of quiet over his strangeness.

For a while the attack starved off the dreams and thoughts, the strange desires and the strange wrongness, but they slowly returned, building up to a point where he could not go near the tree at all and the shrieks seemed to follow him everywhere he went.

So he attacked again, and again, and again. 

Then, their little bodies and leathered wings started to become dull. He moved onto mice that he found in burrows, rabbits that he trapped with rope and it kept going on and on until he could barely stop thinking about it, the desire consuming his every waking minute and so many of the sleeping.

Then, as these things often do, a breaking point was reached.

His mother bought a dog from a shelter, a small creature that had mangled ears, a half-matted coat. It that growled at the youngest Wayne constantly. His parents just laughed, for they did not want to acknowledge their son’s blank stare.

The dog followed him around, barking and growling, and this continued for weeks. His dreams had turned to a vicious barking, no longer filled with the bats that had long since chosen other hunting grounds over the dangerous lawn. The noise shook him, an act within itself that was humiliating and painful against his skin.

So one night, as he had done so many times before, he lured the damned beast out, into the trees and the darkness that had become a home away from home, and he struck it through the throat.

It didn’t die at first, instead wobbled around for a few seconds, before sinking into the small stream that ran not far from his oak. It wheezed painfully, dark eyes and half-broken teeth bared at him so.

It was angry, as only an animal could be. Terror was layered across it's face, licking at the last shreds of energy it had. In the painful few moments before it stopped breathing entirely, it choked one last bark, watery and weak.

Bruce shuddered once more at its cursed noises, and that was that. Bruce crawled back into bed, and put aside the dreams, as he did after such events, and considered the matter closed.

He was awoken in the morning by his mother’s bawling.

His father had explained, sadness in his eyes (at the loss of a pathetic creature? Or at the fact that Thomas Wayne didn’t know if his son understood emotion?) and explained that the dog had wandered out in the night and been attacked by some creature. 

For the first time, an uncomfortable feeling settled on the aftermath, seeing his parents so devastated and invested in this thing that was his. They were not supposed to upset, didn’t they understand? This was all just to make him feel better. The dog was a factor, just as useful as a good movie or a bowl of ice cream on a warm day.  _The dog was not important_.

Expect apparently it was. For across the room, Alfred fixed upon him a look that said very clearly, in the only hints of body language the young boy understood, that he knew that it hadn’t been a raccoon that had taken Martha Wayne’s dog.

One day turned to a week, and through it, there was nothing but the  _sniffles_  and  _whispers_. But every sound just stood to erase all others. He had done this. He had made a mistake. It was almost as if they didn't  _love_  him anymore, when they grieved.

He wanted that. It was his. Always had. Always would be.

So Bruce Wayne swallowed his desires and decided that there would be no more bats or mice or much larger things, for he was coming to an age where people had told him what was wrong and what was not, and he knew now what he had done was wrong.

He saw no more death, witnessed no more pain, until the fateful day that a lone mugger wandered into the wrong alley, as did they.

And then Bruce decided, that violence wasn’t as much fun as it had been before.

. . . 

When Bruce was twelve, he devolved a habit of hitting people.

In general, he devolved a lot of habits. The school he went to was full of rich brats, and most of them were unruly and mean spirited. Bruce was mostly invisible - unnerving and at the exact grade average in which people were not seen nor worried about. On occasion, they would run a news story on the Waynes, and he would find himself momentarily in the centre of a pityfrst, before vanishing once again.

He used this cloak to pick fights.

Not in his school - obviously, but outside. Skipping class was a frequent, not all that judged upon in bored, over-paid classrooms. He switched his clothes in the boys' bathroom sometime after homeroom, ignored the teenagers passing around joints and bragging about kissing girls beneath the benchers. Got a bus right out of the richer districts, or simply walked.

In his defense – and his victims’ – he started by hitting bullies and rescuing people. The victims were always grateful, and so easy to find. Kids several grades younger being shoved around for their lunch money two schools down. The teenage girls being hollered at by boys eyeing them like prizes. The nerds. The gays. The coloured kids. Their attackers posed easy targets,  and their victims saw no need to ever report their rescuer.

In fact, Bruce Wayne was almost a hero, rescuing the weak in feats of strength and bravery. He had a reputation, a record. He was whispered about and held in awe, as young childish politics often are at this stage. Even his own school held him in some high accord, though mostly because all these adventures took place off school, and were done before the school day was over.

But for him, the fights were more then just justice, a hobby he had taken up in books and studies, in practice but not in soul. The desire he had starved off for years had weeded itself back into his life as surely as a disease into a host. The urge to do violence, to fight and to challenge, was as strong as his heartbeat. It did not strangle him, as once his wrongness had.

This desire simply dripped, over and over again, wearing him down with quiet resolve. Water torture, except it was  _all in his head_.

His little escapades were not enough. He needed a challenge.

So when the now terrified bullies did not start fights, he found other ones.

He discovered a small back street hidden away, halfway between the rich and the poor, not more then a few blocks away, where boys and girls around his age got together to trade cards and candy, smoke stolen cigarettes with not an inch of finesse and most of all, pick fights.

The second thing that lent so well to this plan was that he had hours each day that he was unaccounted for. The Wayne family had an apartment in the city anyway, and during the school week, that was where he stayed. Away from memories, away from Alfred that couldn't stand to leave him, couldn't stand to look at him. The staff were aware that he came and went, and that was simply what he did. 

Bruce was a strategist, he had a mind that knew who to pick and how to win. The backstreet provided an anonymous environment to do so. His victory streak build over time, erasing failures and creating skill. It fed not only the sick feeling inside of him, but it fed his pride, to see his enemies defeated.

He tried not to think about it too much, tried to avoid crossing the worlds with a bit of disguises and good excuses. And he managed it well, for a very long time.

And then he noticed the Other.

. . . 

When Bruce was thirteen he was almost unmatched from the group he fought. There was a handful that he never challenged, on the basis that there was some that were too big, too powerful, who fought too dirty. And then there was the Other.

He had noticed early on a thin looking boy, with bruises on his face that never seemed to be from fights and too big clothes. It was almost impossible to tell from looking at him that the Other was different from anyone else there. But Bruce saw his eyes. He saw how he fought and he knew as surely as he had ever known anything, that this boy was smart. He was doing the same things that Bruce was, fighting the same fights and figuring out the same strategies. But unlike some that tried to copy him, the boy was using only his own mind to fuel his goal.

He fought with the same viciousness, planned with the same sharpness and oh, how Bruce’s cold heart went aflutter, because so many years he had been alone – surrounded by people, but still terribly alone – and now, this boy.

There was always something different about him. A lick of violence around his mouth, forever wide in haunted laughter. His opponents feared his mocking as much as they feared his bruises.

Bruce was drawn to this boy. It was as if someone had wound a hook around his insides, then trailed all the string across lawns and bridges, down streets and around schools, until the other end had been infused into the Other. The longer he watched the way the Other moved, the stronger he realized this pull was. All his wrongness had been winding him up to the point that he was drawn to a close against this stranger.

Bruce knew. This Other, was the Other, the only Other, the broken, shattered shards of something inside of him that was missing so many pieces but the Other filled them like water between bricks or puzzle pieces into a bigger, better picture.

And the boy knew as well. (Of course he knew, how could he not, he was the Otherotherotherother--) He gave Bruce those same looks, unstitched him bit by bit to find the same things Bruce saw and he loved what he found. Bruce could see it over every inch of his twisted little face.

Sometimes they talked like they were the only people there, but they never used words. Not for a very long time, did they ever speak, only traded words in glances and small hand gestures, each attempt at communicating growing more subtle at each passing week, until the tiniest flicker of their eyes from the other side of the street meant the world.

One Thursday, the boy grinned extra bright, missing canine tooth highlighting his cracked lips. There was a massive bruise across his left eye that almost swelled it shut. It hadn’t been there the day before and Bruce had fought until his knuckles had bled, the moon was almost setting. The Other had fought for just as long, and left only a few minutes before Bruce and the bruise hadn’t been there when he left. Between the hours of three and six when Bruce had last fought and when he had fought again, it had appeared, along with a slightly split lip and a tired look about the boy.

A new strangeness arose then, one Bruce had not felt before. He wanted to reach out and feel him, hold him and say things he’d have never thought himself saying, because he had seen the way the boy moved, how he talked and he knew how he thought and how he fought. They were the same, like fate had gifted him with a mirror that had birthed a brother he had never had and never would have the chance to have.

It was a gift, a gift from God or some powerful force that had placed upon the earth two such similar people and they aren’t even really similar. They are the same, just the same, carved from the same mould and the same material. They just looked different and they led different lives. But it didn't  _matter_  because the boy  _limped_  when he approached.

That Thursday, the boy came forward – his face painted with false excitement, that dripped away the closer he got, his little shell of protection rotting away, until by the time they were close enough for Bruce to see the smear of blood freckling his lip, there was nothing on the Other's face but blankness, the same bottomless void that was hollowed inside of Bruce.

They stopped only feet from each other, hints of uncertainty nipping at their faces and Bruce can see the same thought he’s thinking – that if they get too close, the Other will disappear and they’ll find it was all just a sad, sorry illusion of their crumbled minds. So Bruce takes a step (because there is the first obvious difference between them – he's willing to do those sorts of things) and Bruce touches the Other.

The world doesn’t end, but they give each other biting smiles. And Bruce understands, that the Other needs his help.

. . . 

His name is Jack and he is  _wonderful_.

. . . 

About six months after that, they have a routine.

Bruce travels to his school early, where he gets off in town, buys two coffees from an expensive café and leaves one of them on the bus bench, to be picked up from behind when he is joined by Jack, who travels from the narrows on public transit with a bus pass Bruce paid for.

They sit in their graffiti’d alley and pick fights when it suits them, because the space is theirs now, their domain and rule that the others knew, though they did not challenge. It didn’t affect their subjects to have champions and thus they do not complain.

They have two hours before Bruce’s school starts, so Bruce reads dog-eared novels and memoirs, soaking up knowledge while Jack scratches designs and writes down things he deems absolutely meaningless and irreplaceably important.

They don’t really share, but when they do, Bruce says aloud, in a tone barely above a whisper, small bits of information that may be helpful and Jack shows him things drawn in straight lines and straight letters. After they do this, Bruce passes along the books - leaves them on benches and gives them as prizes to their scrapping winners - and Jack destroys everything he makes.

It doesn't matter, if they don't keep it. Between the two of them, they've got the perfect memory. These are things they enjoy discovering about each other - the first time Jack draws a design, shows it, destroys it, and two weeks later, Bruce copies it exactly, down to the pencil scruff marks, they are overjoyed.

It's not always easy, getting their minds to line up just right, but they work at it.

. . . 

By the time fourteen unfolds itself, they are growing dependent.

Bruce notices it first, when Jack doesn't show one morning, and why wouldn't he  _show_ , and it isn't until some time later that evening, when Bruce hasn't gone to school, and hasn't gone for meals, that the Other pulls down the ladder, and crawls onto the abandoned fire escape they make their perch.

It's raining, and Bruce's jacket is soaked through. He's huddled under the wooden structure they'd put there the summer before, feet frozen where they're pressed against the metal bars. His hands are stiff from digging into his knees, and his neck is sore.

Jack's bleeding, blood matting his bangs. It's almost impossible to see in the fading light, the black hair already dark and wet enough to conceal it, but Bruce feels it, smells it, when the Other buries his head into Bruce's neck.

There's no noises. The usual crowd's abandoned the alleyway for the day. There's just the patter of rain as Jack unzips Bruce's jacket, slides his cold, shaking hands under Bruce's shirt, straddles his lap and stays there.

Bruce digs his fingers into the small of Jack's back, under the cheap windbreaker and sucks in one breath that doesn't shake, doesn't tremble, doesn't threaten to  _crack_ , because- because he is strong.

He is strong. He tells himself that, while he envisions a hundred people who could have done this to his Other, and how exactly he'd make every single one of them suffer.

This is the first time something like this happens. It is not the last.

. . .

"This city is like a kingdom." It's late at night. They're fifteen. Jack is sprawled beneath Bruce's sheets, only his eyes and nose, his fingers in front of his face and his toes at the end of the bed are visual. He whispers, but Bruce hears him all the same. "Everyone lives like peasants, waiting for a king or queen to come riding in. They'd hang a man for fun if they could."

Bruce breaths in a lungful of dusted sweat and city that comes off the Other so easily. "Pity," he murmurs in return. "that there isn't an heir."

Bruce can feel the toothful grin, more then see it.

"Says who?" Comes the purr.

And somewhere, the well-laid plans of destiny begin to tick.

. . .

At sixteen, Bruce is sent to a therapist.

"Your caretakers are worried for you, Bruce." She's dressed stiffly, doesn't really meet his eyes. "Dr. Thompkins says you've been displaying alarming behaviour. Mr. Pennyworth is concerned for your health."

"There's nothing wrong with me." Says Bruce, and it feels so  _strange_  in his mouth, like he's speaking another language.

The therapist frowns. "You're lying." She says. "What are you really thinking?"

"That you're too late."

He thinks there must have been something about his face, because she seems to believe him. He goes once a week for months, for years.

But nothing comes from it.

. . .

Jack draws the same design every day, and every day he destroys it as easily as can be. He calls it a  _costume_ , but that's his way of mocking Bruce.

By seventeen, Bruce's studies have turned to sciences of the chemical and social nature. The patterns that scratch at the boundaries of his mind have begun to formulate into something he can  _use_ , and now he sees it everyday; the way people move, the way people talk.

Jack runs his hands over brick and steel.

"Give it time." He says, and burns the sketches.

. . . 

They are eighteen when things become dangerous.

There's a call late at night to the manor Bruce mostly resides in. There's only the choking cough of someone's wheezing breath on the other side of the line, and then the strangled sound of  _"Bruce_."

Someone starts making noises that are loud and desperate, and it might have been Bruce, and it might have been Jack, but overall it's almost impossible to tell.

There's a blur, and Bruce finds himself in Gotham General's emergency room, waiting in a limbo that's too slow and too painful to really calm him down.

He doesn't know what's happened.

When they let him in - because he paid the bills and for the private room and all the medical care - Jack's still awake, but lost in his own head, eyes almost black with pain and fear, so much fear.

They both fear, because they are the other to the other and how,  _how_  could they possible survive without the other? Would the other wilt, turn to dust if the other died? These are questions they have not asked, have not dared ask, because how could they possibly know the answer.

It's not until Bruce's cards are flagged in the system that Alfred and Leslie come for him. They turn up in the doorway, all frowns and anger and  _fear_  and Bruce thinks he’d have been dragged away, if Jack hadn’t been holding onto Bruce’s arm like the world was dropping away from beneath him.

Jack had turned eighteen two days ago – it had been a grand celebration with forged excuses for school on Bruce’s behalf and a hotel room in another part of town and cake and movies and God, it had been fun – and somewhere between then and now, something had changed.

Jack's only words on the subject will always be that he was 'kicked out'. If there was a fight, Bruce doesn't know. If it was family or friends or a youth home or a gang, Bruce doesn't know.

But Leslie Thompkins' eyes soften at the rare look on both of their faces. She touches Alfred's arm gently, gives him a sideways look. They both see what the boys don't want to - that it doesn't look like a stranger laid up in bed. It looks like Bruce was shot too, like two sets of stitches are settling instead of one, like two people came close to dying, instead of one.

“I’m sorry.” Bruce wasn’t, but he knew people liked hearing these words.

Alfred just titled his head and cast a look upon them, trying to decide how serious they were. He had never met Jack, never known. Suspected, perhaps, that Bruce was hiding something because Bruce was good, but not perfect and he did still get notices from school and sometimes the people who Bruce was suppose to be with made it clear he wasn’t.

Bruce simply gave Alfred a long, steady look. “I won’t leave him.”

Alfred had survived many of Bruce’s troubles; all the missed school and the unexplained absences and the dead animals. Leslie had been a friend of the family's long enough to have endured many of them too. They'd had learned not to question – not because they didn’t believe they had the right, but because they simply knew it was easier.

Jack gave the two caretakers the most terrified of glances, understanding above all that these were the jailers of his Other and he could take his Bruce away far more easily then Jack could take him back.

"Don't be stupid." Leslie whispers to Bruce, presses a hand to Alfred's arm when he tries to complain.

Alfred signs over a larger amount of money to Bruce's personal accounts, calls his school and gives him the week off and they go, leaving the two boys sitting in a hospital room.

There are some scattered medical reports, at Leslie's request for the first couple of days, then the boys are gone, bills paid, stitches still in, medication abandoned.

Bruce turns up two and a half weeks later, on the door of the manor, dirty and still in the same clothes, but a rare pleased look about him. The money was gone. Jack was gone. Bruce gave the two caretakers a true smile, the first in years.

“You won’t find him.”  _He’s mine and you can’t have him._

They did not speak of Jack.

. . . 

By nineteen, they have plans and they have made choices.

Stage one is easiest. Alfred had been dumping college brochures on Bruce's lap for years, and selecting one had been easy. Then it's a simple matter of research-planning-schedules.

Except it  _isn't_.

They have barely been apart since they were so young, and this part of the plan, it calls to  _go away_.

Jack would have surely gone with him, followed him to the ends of the Earth if such a thing was needed, but they had long since decided that Gotham needed them more. If God, or something even greater had placed the two of them so perfectly in this place of broken glass, then it must be destiny that they remain there so. Jack stayed behind; with numbers and addresses for all the places Bruce planned to go.

For Bruce had no plans to stay in college.

For years, they had formulated a plot unlike any other. Because it had started with Bruce’s parents in an alleyway and Jack’s bruises and it had gone from there to stealing and muggings and so many things they had both indulged and ignored. Their domain, the alley that had started it all, had crumbled years ago, but from it they had watched crime dig into every crack of their city, their glorious kingdom that was slowly rotting. Their world needed something, something beyond after-school programs and rent-a-cops.

They had a scheme. It couldn’t even be called a plan. They had a  _destiny_.

Bruce knew where he was going to look, what he was going to do. And he would travel as far as the world went to find every piece of the puzzle, while Jack stayed behind and laid all the groundwork that would mean all the difference to make their plan a success.

There was thousands of lines and hundreds of sketches buried in their heads. More spots then they could count, all hidden throughout the city. Years, they had labored over this, and years more before there would even be a time where they would step forth onto their city, fully prepared for all that was coming.

They had no idea what was before them, or how wrong or far their plan would go.

They had no idea; they may even be too late.


	2. Chapter 2

Bruce rolled the fragment herbs between his gloved fingers, smelled the spices that added a sharp tang to the air around him. The marketplace was busy this early in the morning, busier then it had been last night or the evening before. Every person rumbling past with brimmed hats and tired faces, many with wares freshly bought or ready to sell. Most of them were Asian, mumbling in a language Bruce only knew the name of.

This town was different then the others he had been to before. Or maybe it wasn’t really. It was poor, remote and uncivilized in nature, with almost no technology to speak of, and he’d seen hundreds of places just like it. Its only saving grace – if you could call it that – was that upon the mountains overlooking it, like a big brother everyone was slightly nervous around, stood the templates and barracks Bruce called… almost home.

Almost. Regardless of the years he had now spent with the League of Shadows (far longer then he’d stayed anywhere else, with anyone else), the unnamed mountain felt far more like a hotel room then a house. The League did not foster bonds, and even if they did, Bruce knew his heart was always landmasses away, buried deep inside the city he had crawled from as a child.

Gotham. Even here, buried so deep in a culture he could never hope to breach, she still sang like a sailor’s wife, desperate and pleading for him to come home.

He allowed only the smallest of smiles – not because the spices were all that great – but because he knew it was never really Gotham singing for him, but Jack. Poor Jack, who had suffered through the faint contact and low income and loneliness that overtook a person without work or purpose, separated from their beloved soul mate. Poor Jack who had just been likened to a grieving wife.

Upon his next correspondence, perhaps he would neglect to inform the man that he’d been officially dubbed the women of their none too stable or pleasant relationship. As much as Jack enjoyed a good joke, there was never much joking about their bond. That was just untouchable, on principle if nothing else.

“Are you American?” The sudden inquiry draws him away from eavesdropping on the not entirely natives who have been discussing arms trades behind the booth. Bruce throws a slow glance at the speaker, who grins at him from behind cheap sunglasses and a thick winter coat.

“You spreken ze English?” The man jokes, very, very white teeth giving him another grin. It is clear he doesn’t speak a lick of Dutch, but has most likely picked the phase somewhere and thought it funny.

Bruce eyes him a moment longer, sizing him up. His sunglasses are cheap, but they match his (expensive) hiking boots and the (cheap) watch on his wrist. The coat is brand new and also expensive, but the pants and the sweater and shirt collar are worn and used. He’s bundled like its snowing for mid-spring, and his accent suggests southern American. No tourist camera, phrase book or map, but a simple notebook and writing pen.

Journalist. And his camerawoman is running up behind him sans equipment. Journalist on his day off then.

“It is actually ‘Spreekt u Engels’.” Bruce purrs, added the fake friendly layer the western part of the world is so fond of. He’s too interested in the criminals before him to truly take the mask to his eyes, but for this it works.

The journalists laughs. He tilts his head and brushes his fingers along Bruce’s arm. Another member of the League, much more native looking, casts a quick glance as if to say, “do you want me to kill this guy?”. Bruce is still keeping an ear on the smugglers. The League can’t talk to Bruce silently like Jack can, but they come close. Multitasking is always an option. They’ll deal with the news crew, they’ll deal with the arms and they’ll make sure their little resort town is safe and sound for another day of deserted highland lifestyle.

The Journalist laughs, asks where he’s from, asks what his name is, asks how long he’s been there. Bruce just shrugs it off and flirts back. The locals don’t understand English anyway, and don’t know what is happening.

Of all of Bruce Wayne’s chances, he meets a gay American in the barren wastelands of fucksville.

<”Who are they?”> Whispers his comrade, in a language a few dialects off from the locals. The natives will notice, will know it as their “peacekeepers”, but the Americans can’t even tell. <”Foreigners can be dangerous.”>

Bruce gives the news team a faux smile. “Excuse me for a moment.” He purrs in equal charm to the other Shadow. <”They are a news team and they are trying to bed me.”> The Shadow replies swiftly. <”Kill them.”>

Bruce just nods.

~*~

Samuel kisses with more skill then Bruce has seen in a long time, even better then Jack. (But Jack is terrible at kissing, as is Bruce. They bite, and that is the end of it. That’s how they do things Gotham style.) His camerawoman, Lucy is also his girlfriend and both of them are quite partial to other partners. Bruce knows, in his way, as he knows within a second of joining them in their hotel room just how this whole thing is going down. He also knows that they only do this abroad, where their perfect image cannot be traced.

He smoothes and preens and makes them laughed with well placed jokes, because Jack’s always been the fucker, but that doesn’t mean Bruce didn’t learn a thing or two.

He holds them in a rare moment of peace, thinks almost purely of Gotham, of Jack. How much he misses his American accents and entitled asshole attitudes. He contemplates how to kill them, how to dispose of their bodies.

There was a hundred ways he could do it, with only his hands, as the League and others have trained him. Hundreds more if he uses the weapons concealed in his clothes, or the items scattered around the room.

He settles for old fashioned. Gets up to find some beer or water, comes back with a kitchen knife and stabs both of them before through the throat before they even have time to react. He cleans what evidence of his presence he can, even if there is no police force to trace him. It’s like a habit he can’t kick, OCD of the best kind, perhaps?

He hums a showtune, the kind he listened to during his childhood, with Jack in alleyways, picking fights like the sun wouldn’t come up tomorrow, going through packs upon packs of candies and fruit because they needed the sugar to keep going.

He spares but a glance on his way out, redressed and ready to go. The corpses stare at him in horror, frozen forever in their last moments. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a newspaper on a suitcase. One article is circled in red, front page. Samuel’s pride and joy, no doubt. But he’s not interested in the side article at all – because the header says Gotham News and suddenly his heart is breaking, because Gotham, Jack, mother, _father_.

Sosososososo long he has been away, years without seeing Jack’s face or feeling cracked pavement as he runs or the blissful drug-like feel he’d gain from picking fights. Bruce has always been convinced he doesn’t really have a heart to break, but man, does it ever feel like it now. Perhaps the muscles around the missing organ are just contracting, as they have been known to do, wondering where it went?

The Gotham newspaper isn’t the only one there – there are ones from a lot of east coast cities, some in the area, some not. Samuel and Lucy had not been Gothamites (thank God) but that didn’t mean they had hadn’t been there, in _his_ city. In their city. Hunting stories like animals after prey.

He takes the newspaper. Because Bruce has been waiting, waiting for the time to go back. When their plan can be unveiled for all of the world to see. Perhaps it’ll tell him if the time is soon.

~*~

Bruce had set rules in place for himself years ago. _Don’t kill_ had been one of them. His darkness was a slippery slope and he could not hope to see the bottom, but he knew killing pushed him farther and farther along. The bats had been where it started – little nudges like children’s hands telling him to go down, down down downdown into the darkness. Then he’d travled and he had _learned_. He knew how to kill properly now, but he tried not to. Criminals, he would, if the chance arose, if it was the better option over all. Sometimes necessity rose though, like it just had. To protect people who would surely kill him if he did not do as they asked.

~*~

Bruce could not be bullied. That wasn’t the lie. He told himself they’d kill him if he didn’t kill, and perhaps that was the lie.

~*~

A small part of him – no, a big part – wishes to be exactly like Jack, to be consumed so completely nobody can tell the difference between them.

~*~

Jack has killed, so he will too.

~*~

Ra’s knows of course. Knows before he even got back, because he’s late (if only by mere minutes) and he’s off, withdrawn and thinking. He hides the paper and goes to his tutor, meditating alongside his mentor.

Ra’s does not ask for clarification, for while his other teachers may assume that Bruce will stay forever, climbing the ranks as surely as he climbs the mountain, Ra’s knows better. Ra’s always knows better. Always has.

<“You’ll cleanse your city like a fire.”> Murmurs the leader, focusing far beyond anything seen by sight.

<”Of course.”> Bruce is quieter then him, not humble but careful. <”I will make it as if it never suffered before.”>

Ra’s spares only the smallest of nods, and they speak no more. Ra’s had always been the favorite of Bruce’s mentors; they get along better then most people the billionaire has met.

They don’t say goodbye, because they both know this isn’t forever.

~*~

“Alfred.” Bruce speaks as if the years had never gone by, as if he’s calling over the weekend between due papers. The other end of the line is silent, deadly silent and the answer is thick with grief and hope and anger. “Bruce.”

“I’ll be arriving at the Gotham airport in three days time at noon.” Bruce flips through the plane tickets before him, on top of the duffel bag full of fake IDs, mountain clothes and dangerous weapons. The League does not have much to their name, but they still have their tools.

“Bruce where have you been…” Alfred’s voice is thicker then before, almost on the verge of tears, perhaps even more so when Bruce doesn’t answer.

“I’ll see you then.” He cuts the line and pushes down the tiniest smidge of feeling that had crawled through the cracks of his own mind. Returning to the only parent he had, was an enjoyment he could not allow himself. This was business, even if nobody else knows.

He doesn’t call Jack, because they’ve tried that and it is too painful. So he just sends a quick text instead; _Back in town on 27 th, same old at midnight?_

He’s an hour into his slow journey to the nearest airport when the reply comes. _I’ll bring coffee and cake!_

And Bruce allows himself a smile, because he’s a prince coming back from a war campaign, ready to reap riches and be crowned anew.

~*~

Alfred is everything he remembered. Old and stern, but still loving, with tears in his eyes and a tremble in his hands. He knows Bruce doesn’t enjoy touching, but he grasps him in a hug all the same, sobs raking his body and mumbles of how much he’s missed him. Bruce returns those things in kind; pulling up the mask Alfred knows is there, though he doesn’t say anything. Best to leave such things be.

Many curious glances are thrown their way, at the old, well-dressed man and his scraggily, battle worn companion. Not to mention the expensive car they get into. But Bruce has been away so long, having left a child and returned a man. Nobody recognized him, and none cared yet.

Alfred just stares at him, so sure and yet so confused, positive only that hell had been dwelt. He knew, as only Alfred would know, that Bruce had changed forever.

And perhaps a small part of him felt guilt for it; that he could share none of what had happened to him.

Or he would have, if he had felt guilt.

~*~

He spends more time in police stations, on the phone and being hugged then he ever has before, that’s for sure. Returning from the dead is tricky, more so when the rest don’t want you there. Never had Bruce seen such heated glances from the Wayne Enterprises board.

But his prints match those on file from some miss-endeavors in his youth, many people, old friends that were never truly friends confirm his voice and face and in a week or so, DNA tests will prove everything as well.

Everyone around him is in tears, though Alfred has now calmed enough to start giving him those looks of displeasure at the situation. Alfred knows he did this on purpose, and Alfred knows terrible things happened wherever he was.

Alfred just doesn’t know whether those terrible things were done to Bruce or other people.

~*~

By the time everything winds down, it’s ten at night and they’re back at the mansion, Bruce absorbing the walls and halls like a fish returned to water. He prefers the city, but his home is close enough.

His room is still full of all the things he’d left there – old clothes, faded childish comic books, textbooks that still looked like they’d never been cracked open. He’d taken almost nothing with him, not being sentimental and certainly not alerting anyone to his plan.

The box was under his bed, tucked beneath a floorboard. Jack may have taken their lists with him, but Bruce had kept a few of his own things – schematics and drawings mostly, in a worn sketchbook. The box itself was from a fairground many years ago, cluttered to the brim with things they’d perceived as treasures, or memories. An oddity in their own oddities.

He stared at it longer then he’d meant to, flipping through old pages and smoothing fingers over crinkled photographs. The bookmark was still in the page he was looking for – a piece of torn journal paper to mark their greatest idea.

Bats. They still tugged at his insides, seized his head in a vice grip on the worse of days.

Gotham was a disease on the face of a crumbling world; a festering sore nobody wanted to deal with. So many people scared, and so many _not_.

It angered him, sparked the rare spot of emotion that tormented him. It was _his_ city, they were _his_ people. The League – or at least Ra’s – had entrusted him with a goal.

Cleanse it, like a fire.

Jack had an idea, a terrible, terrible idea that was so strangely wrong that it might have been a _right_.

Bats. Always the bats.

Bruce considered the images before him, the costume and everything else they had needed.

Fear burned brighter then anything else, so what better to use then his own demons to show Gotham who was truly in charge?

~*~

Jack had not been living in their apartment, but that didn’t mean Bruce still hadn’t been paying rent. When they had been young adults, he’d set it up to pay automatically for the next several decades, he’d even bought the complex when the ownership had changed and the city had threatened to tear it down.

It was their hideaway, their council chambers where they debated matters of war. They’d spent days there by themselves, almost never speaking but understanding all the same. It was still mostly unfurnished, one sink still full of cracked ceramic and broken glass from their fights, the TV still hobbling by on some unpacked cardboard boxes of what may have been books. In their palace, the kings had little time for such things, instead leaving them for nonexistent servants.

Jack himself was splayed across the living room carpet, eyes fixated firmly on several newspapers before him. Newspapers were everywhere, in fact; over the couches and stacked in corners, tucked in cupboards and oddly enough, in chest of drawers that had indented to be placed in the bedroom, but never made it past the hallway.

And he had brought cake and brewed coffee, having timed the traffic perfectly, so Bruce’s mug was still steaming on a slider before him.

“You know, I’ve always hated muggers.” He purred, black hair in his eyes. Bruce’s stomach flipped rather oddly, having set his gaze upon Jack for the first time in years. He hadn’t changed too much, still rather slender, with finer muscle tone from running and a handsome face. He’d forgone a shirt, probably on purpose, showing off an array of scars and pale skin and he still looked more like a boy then a man, still had that wicked grin upon his face, dark green eyes strangely dead looking.

It was almost surreal, after so long.

“I mean, how many times did we almost get mugged?” The Other held up the paper he’d been reading, displaying a picture and article about a man that had gotten off on a technicality. “If I had a dollar for every time some punk pulled a Swiss blade on me and demanded my wallet, I’d be as rich as you.”

Bruce smirked in return. “You couldn’t be as rich as me.”

“Well… I’d come close.”

“Maybe.”

They smiled for a moment, and then dropped the act, both going almost completely blank. If a stranger had walked in, they’d have had shivers going down their spines from the unnerving stillness that took them both.

And in that time, more open then most people could be in a lifetime, they said everything that couldn’t be spoken aloud. The loneliness and the sadness, the pain and hurt. The cracks that had appeared over both of their control, the fissures that had splintered off from the wound where the Other had been torn.

_I missed you_. They never said it, but they knew all the same.

And a moment later, it was over. The masks weren’t completely in place, but they were close enough. Enough to make them look human again.

“Where does that mugger live?” Bruce dropped himself onto the floor, pawing through the papers and tracing the circled articles.

And Jack just grinned back, teeth bared like an animal.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that chapter length (and segment length) will be slowly increasing over the next few chapters. I've been having trouble meeting some word counts because I've been finishing up what I wanted to do early or in less words then I projected. So updates will become larger as time goes on and we slow down into one or two events taking up a lot of chapters. I'm kinda done with backstory at the moment here too. Just thought I'd say.

Mr. Fox could have been richer than Bruce if he'd left Wayne Enterprises. He had the inspiration of an artist, the knowledge of a scientist and the skills of a businessman. It made for a lethal combination,but Mr. Fox had desired to stay by Thomas Wayne's side and in turn, his son. He'd gotten by during Bruce's absence by keeping his head low and building his labs full of unreleased projects, just waiting for the billionaire's return.

Bruce had never mentioned an desire for equipment, but Fox was a smart man, and understood Bruce's interest at a young age as something far more then just curiosity. When he returned from aboard well muscled and moving like a cat, Fox understood that whatever phase one was, it had been completed. 

Which meant phase two would swiftly be launched.

The night before had been fruitful - not only had Bruce and Jack tracked down some of their targets, and swiftly delivered justice, but as the moon had risen, the pair had instead turned to showing off, an event they were known for doing every now and then in their youth. Bruce had never felt so carefree as they traveled through the city, showing instead of telling and frightening punks into leaving their muggees alone. 

And Jack's amazement at his new skills had send such a thrill through him, though it was nothing compared to his own awe at the Other's new abilities - his skill with knives and guns and his running speed had all greatly increased. Where once they had relied upon raw strength and pure genius to get a job done, now they are a range of abilities, that combined could take down almost anything or anyone.

It made Bruce oddly proud.

Mr. Fox had met with him the day after his return from the dead - for all intents and purposes, Bruce was simply being briefed on Wayne Enterprises successes in preparation for his takeover - but both of them had much greater plans, so Bruce and Fox find themselves in the dusty closets of the business’s storages.

And they are full of treasures. If the League could get their hands on half of this stuff, Bruce knows their mission would be finished within a year. Because the belly of the beast is full of weapons and armour, computers and lab equipment. Damn, there are even some very impressive cars in there, that make Bruce reconsider all of his plans for expensive sports cars.

He had a photocopy of the suit (they had decided costume was too childish, even if that was what it was) in his pocket and it was burning him. Every piece of beautiful, beautiful engineering he saw made him slightly less sure of his plan. He wanted so hard to believe, but at the same time... it was childish.

Very, very, childish. But were humans not overall childish creatures? 

Fox gave him a smile, one that said he knew Bruce had a request, and so the billionaire pushed past the mild twinges spitting from his head and presented the schematics with a flourish and an ease the League had taught him effortlessly.

Fox stared over him a moment, humming and seeming to decide while not deciding all at once.

“You’ll need a bit of a redesign around the arms for the armour.” He said at last, tucking the blueprints into his shirt pockets. “Or you won’t be able to attach the cape properly.”

“I’m getting a cape?” Bruce tried to smile back, though he was pretty sure capes had been a no.

“All superheros need a cape.” The scientist hummed again, eyes sparking with ideas flashing past his eyes like lightning. 

Bruce just nodded slowly, partially in agreement, partially because his stomach had twisted rather sickly at the word _superhero_.

He wasn’t a superhero, never would be. The darkness inside him was too thickly rooted to be ever eradicated. He couldn’t become a role model or a grand symbol of hope. All he had wished to do was fight crime his style and that was it.

But he had a sudden feeling it was a costume, because Fox was going to make him play pretend, pretend at being good and a symbol of justice and Bruce needed his help, so he’d agree.

Without Bruce noticing at all, the old man had lifted him a bit up the slope, dragging him an inch from the pit below, where he’d sunk to very terrible places.

~*~

Bruce dumped the duffel bag onto the apartment bed, spilling tools and gadgets over the sheets like it was Christmas.

Jack’s expression certainly made it look like the holiday, as he giggled with a manic glee and shifted through Bruce’s spoils.

“Is this a grappling gun?” He questioned, hefting the tool onto his lap and running his fingers along the sharp edges. “Because I really want a grappling gun.” 

“It is _my_  grappling gun, not yours.” Bruce scowled, snatching the potential weapon back and replacing it with a pack of small explosive smoke charges. “Throw these at the wall.”

The resulting smoke and loud noise sent the young criminal into a squeal of noises that would have put any thirteen year old girl to shame. “Brucie, Brucie, please, please, I _need_  those.”

“You can have some of them.” Bruce responded, trying to keep the smile off his face. “Most of this is mine.”

“But why do you get the cool stuff and I don’t?” Jack whined, dropping his head into Bruce’s lap and giving him an upside down frown. “You get neat toys and an awesome costume-”

“-It isn’t a costume-”

“-and I get to do all the boring, _sneaking_  stuff.” The Other pouted rather effectually; almost making Bruce give him back the grappling gun. 

“You forgot the car.”

Jack sat up very slowly, turned around and fixed the Other with a deep stare that would have made lesser beings cry. “Bruce, how awesome is this car.”

“On a scale of one to ten?”

Jack hummed in agreement.

“About a thirteen.” And even Bruce couldn’t mask his smirk at that remark.

The resulting scream was heard two floors down, but thankfully nobody came to investigate the very excited man and his companion.

~*~

“So I’ve got a job.” The Other purred, black hair in his eyes as he buried his nose in Bruce’s neck. “I was kinda hoping you’d crash it.”

Bruce cracked open an eye and groaned. “I just got back.”

“But its a great way to test out your costume!”

“ _Suit_.”

“Whatever.”

Bruce yawned and watched the sun set out the window. He’d already told Alfred that he needed a bit of time to adjust to being in Gotham, and would be staying in the city for a day or two for paperwork, so thankfully he didn’t need to go home yet, not with what they had planned. “Gang?” He mumbled, rubbing circles onto the smaller Other’s shoulder.

“Mob. They need blackmail shit on somebody - gonna break into this old chemical plant.”

“What do you need to do then?”

“Wear some stupid getup and redirect the fire in case anyone shows up. Remember that Red Hood stuff from a year or two?” Jack yawned as well, closing his eyes and snuggling back down into their nest.

“That... sounds kinda dangerous.” Bruce admitted.

“Relax. I go in, you show up, you kick everyone’s asses and string ‘em up somewhere, I escape, and then boom! Instant publication.” The Other grinned a face splitting grin. “And the Batman is born. We’ll even do a couple of test runs with some assholes around the city or something during the next few days.”

“Do you think it isn’t too soon with my return?” Bruce mumbled into his Other’s hair. “Some people may guess who the Batman is...”

“It won’t matter - once we’re done, everyone will be powerless to stop us.” Jack smiled this time, a sweet smile that was partnered with a small hug. “We’ll be kings.”

~*~ 

Drug dealers turned Jack’s stomach with alarming consistency. Perhaps it was his knowledge of chemistry that told him far too much about mind-altering substances, or perhaps a pale shadow from his parents, though that last one was shaken away and ignored.

Above him, his Other was hiding in the darkness, suit on and tool-belt at the ready. Some of the parts - proper mask and cape and some last minute redesigns - would’t be done until a day or two before their first big mission, but that hadn’t been an excuse to avoid going out tonight.

Jack stepped from the shadows with a purr on his lips and a dangerous glint in his eyes. “Evenin’ boys. Got anything special tonight?”

The dealers looked up, slightly bored expressions on their face that turned Jack’s blood to acid. How dare they, vermin that they were, to dig into the flesh of their kingdom like parasites and then react with _boredom_.

But never matter, it’d be over soon. 

Jack didn’t have a costume, but he had dressed for the part; druggie getup and all, with a bit of an added flare that Bruce had turned his noses up at. They knew sooner or later they’d have to hide Jack’s involvement in drawing people out, but so far, everyone was none the wiser.

The dealers stepped forward, hands already in their pockets and bags to grab his request. “Sure dude. Whatever you want-”

A gleeful crack echoed through the alleyway as Bruce fell down, rendering the first dealer quite immobile with a broken leg.

A moment later, the dirty side street was filled with screaming, as the second man backed away with terror. The Other growled deeply, sounding every bit a demon from hell, before he grabbed the dealer by the shirt and lifted him right off his feet with one hand.

Jack knew it was his job to run now, and spread the alarm, but he was almost sad (or he would have been, had his heart not been as dead as Bruce’s) to leave the show. It didn’t stop him from bolting down the street though and yelling for someone to call the police.

Behind him, the screams intensified for a moment before sliding off into sobs. Jack ducked in another shadow and waited for the Other, who turned up a minute later with blood on his knuckles and a pleased look on his face.

They didn’t speak, lapsing back into one of their episodes. But the message between them was clear. 

_That was fun._

_Lets do that again_. 

~*~ 

The week passes something like this;

The press releases that happen during the daytime are hell packaged and wrapped in birthday paper. He’s all over the news and there are cameras everywhere and it. Is. Awful.

Thankfully, as the week crawls on, “The Batman” begins to emerge, wrangling some of the spotlight off of Bruce Wayne, which makes sneaking into the apartment all that much easier.

It doesn’t make it easier to talk to Alfred, who actually catches him in almost-full getup as he crawls back into the Mansion one early dawn. Alfred is not very fond of the idea - at all.

But Fox convinces him it's an _amazing_  idea. Fox and Alfred talk a lot, and some of it involves yelling on the butler’s part.

Nights were rather short - actually, they were long, but they felt short - and included mostly striking fear into the hearts of evil-doers everywhere.

Jack had a knack for seeking out where shit was going down, so ninety present of the time, Bruce was waiting and Jack was sniffing. Together they took out muggers, burglars, rapists and dealers. Mobs and gangs had already started to whisper, about a shadow that saw all and attacked where it saw fit.

They were the night, swift and dangerous and oh so clever.

And then it went terribly, terribly wrong.

~*~

“Iiiiittts the big night!” Jack was bouncing in excitement, his temporary costume over the bed and tools across the floor. The sun wasn’t even setting yet, but they were already preparing.

Bruce gave him a small smile from the couch, where he was lining up every single new toy Fox had given him the day before. His new suit was ready, mask, cape and all.

They spared but a moment together, Jack as the Red Hood and Bruce as the Batman, sitting on the floor in full gear in front of the balcony door, masks and capes on the carpet beside them. The sun bled its colors into the sky like a painting on the Wayne Manor walls.

They drank in the sight of their kingdom, cradled in broken bones and shattered dreams and they couldn’t be happier.

Jack got up and kissed Bruce lightly on his forehead, before going out to leave, cloak and helmet under his arm.

“See you at seven.” He purred, a blissful smile on his face.

~*~

Their lives were perfect.

~*~

And then they weren’t.

~*~

Bruce’s roar almost drowned the screams on frightened mobsters as he scattered them like bowling pins. This is the biggest shindig they’ve broken up so far - complete with semi-automatic weapons being fired in the Bat’s direction, and a lot of thug talk.

If Bruce had been watching instead of participating, he would have thought the whole thing rather cliche, but in the midst of it, it was a thrill unlike any other.

Jack, very stupid looking red helmet over his head, was giggling like a school girl, with the occasional crackle. They knew for this one, they’d have to fight at least a bit, but that was the grand finale.

So Bruce kicked through leg bones and cracked heads together like eggs, dealing more damage then he gained. All the while screams backdropped the setting and guns went off with alarming frequency, sending that invisible shock through Bruce every time a bullet was shot. Jack added his own soundtrack with a high-pitched crackle like a hyena.

He dodged and ducked and fought his way through, leaving criminals dazed and wounded, cradling damaged limbs. Slowly he made his way through the maze of tanks and gages, before scaling the stairs and catwalks to take down the gunmen stationed above.

He made a small side trip to knock the man grabbing paper like it was food and he was starving. The blackmail material fluttered to the floor - mostly old finical records and the like - and before it even touched the ground he was back out, tossing one man over the railing and downing another with a well placed Batarang (one of their personal favourite Fox toys).

The gunfire stuttered to a halt, the two remaining men beginning to think it might be a good idea to surrender. The Red Hood was closer though, and Bruce needed witnesses, so he slowly advanced towards the Other, who only giggled and shifted into a fighting stance.

Bruce’s heart was in his ears. He’d never fought Jack - never in all of their years had they ever laid fists upon each other.

For a moment they paused, both weighing the gravity of the situation. And then Jack struck, blinding fast and with a screaming laugh while he did.

Bruce deflected, and threw back a rib-cracking punch, which was partially blocked. From there it was pure fists, the blood roaring in his ears as they battled. The rest of the world disappeared like a dream to the morning and Bruce wondered, why had they never done this before? Why had they never gone at each other?

Then suddenly there was a massive bang, as a gun was fired. For a single moment Bruce’s whole mind was overtaken with a cry of _mother, father, gun, pearls, Jack_.

But Jack hadn’t been hit. He just stumbled back as the shot went through his cape. He stumbled and his foot caught the edge of the bright red fabric, and he tripped, arms swinging for purchase.

Bruce lunged, but not before with an ear-shattering scream signalled Jack’s fall into the vat of acid-laced chemicals below him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hehehehe.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think with this chapter (and certainly the next one) I make it onto the first page of the Joker/Batman pairing if you sort by word count on AO3. That's pretty cool in my opinion. Also wanted to mention that I think I'll be doing a Monday-Wednesday-Friday update timing. So this is Friday's - have a good weekend everyone. Thanks for the lovely words so far. WARNING: fairly graphic descriptions of chemical wounds.

The Other is... gone. 

He fell, like an angel from heaven.

He was consumed, like the earth had swallowed the Other whole, deciding that Bruce was not worthy of the second half of his soul. 

For a moment, Bruce thinks about throwing himself over the railing after Jack and becoming gone too.

~*~

Jack sinks, like a stone in the sea, all flailing limbs and _burning_. God, how he burns. Surely he has fallen into hell, the devil coming to claim him for his sins.

(He is so sorry, at that moment, for every terrible thing he has ever done because now it will take him away from his Other-)

He drowns, in liquid fire, the acid scratching away at every single piece of him, scarring and tearing him apart.

It wraps around and around him like a snake about to swallow him whole.

~*~

In his terror, Jack slides down, down and down. But something inside of him rises. Something twisted and black, that screams. 

It claws at the surface, lungs gasping for air.

Jack drowns. The Monster inside him does not.

~*~

The Red Hood crawls over the rim of the tank and falls to the ground a few meter below within a couple of seconds of the whole thing happening and Bruce almost cries right there, as unusual as it is for him.

The Other is alive. Bruce's heart almost restarts, as if all those missing emotions over the years have finally made an appearance. He's about to leap down and hold Jack like there is no tomorrow, but then his League training slams him like a truck on the highway.

He slides down the catwalk and very, very gently pretends to handcuff the wheezing, limp man to a pipe. "Once my back is turned, get out of here, I'll meet you outside."

His only answer is a moan, and he wants to stay with his Other, find out what's wrong and help him, but his head is still in fighting mode, so he grapples up the ledge, snags the two very stunned gunmen and knocks them both out. 

When he turns back to survey the crime scene, the Red Hood had vanished, leaving only a thin trail of blood and dripping chemicals to signal his flight. Bruce secures everything as quickly as he can, suddenly noticing the blare of sirens in the distant. The whole ordeal has taken maybe ten minutes and it suddenly feels like a lifetime. As the first police car skids to a halt in the parking lot, he makes his escape.

~*~

Jack wasn't hard to find. He was leaning against a wall near Bruce's car, still wheezing loudly and trembling like he'd run a marathon. The closer Bruce got however, the more he noticed his Other wasn't... wheezing, he was laughing. Fits upon fits of giggles, that shook his whole body.

The helmet was at his feet, and from here Bruce couldn't see his face, only the slumped back of his head, which had an odd coloured tinge to it. The laughter was rising in volume, shaking him more and more and Bruce reached him just as Jack fell to his knees, letting out a fresh moan of pain between giggles.

Bruce touched his shoulder softly and Jack's mirth dropped like a stone. For a moment all that could be heard was the police sirens in the background and Jack's lapsing breathing.

Then Jack turned around and Bruce almost wished he didn't.

His Other's skin was blistering and peeling, turning an unnatural shade of white. His eyes were bloodshot and his singed hair had a noticeable green shade to it. The look on his face was beyond manic as he struggled to grip Bruce's arm and stay upright. Bruce couldn't keep the look of horror off his own face as he lifted the smaller man up and started to carry him towards the car.

Jack let out a shrieking laugh, his smile enhanced from his split lips and cracked skins. His gums were bleeding and Bruce could see every single one of his teeth as he grinned one of his trademark smiles.

"O... Oh... _Brucie_." Jack shuddered against his Other's chest as he was put in the passenger seat and buckled in. "Th... That... Ww... Waa... Was..."

"Shut up!" Bruce hissed. "We don't know what the damage is."

Jack spared him a small glance and gave a slow nod, laughter and acidy breath sliding between his lips and teeth.

Bruce punched in his home number as he pulled out of the shadows and made for the highway towards the richer residential areas of the city. A moment later Alfred's voice crackled through the interior of the car. "Yes, Master Bruce?"

"Alfred, I need the infirmary set up downstairs." He grit through his teeth. "One patient, acid reaction and chemical burns."

There was a pause and then; "Don't you think it'd be a better idea to take this patient to the hospital?"

Bruce cast Jack a quick look, where the Other was slumped against the car door, still bleeding slightly and whimpering from the pain that was setting in. His clothes were falling apart from the acid content and Bruce could see mottled patches of white and cream skin laced with red and blue veins. "No, I'll explain later."

"Very well, Master Bruce. I'll prepare the medical supplies." The butler could barely keep the displeasure from his voice.

Bruce just cut the connection and focused back on the road. He didn't want to think about the man beside him, his manic laughter or the damage that was done.

He also didn't think about the possibility that Jack could still die.

~*~

Alfred's look of terror must have matched, if not surpassed Bruce's own, but Jack was too far gone at this point to care. Carrying the Other bridal style to the bright steel table and its rolling trollies of bandages and washes, Bruce tried very hard not to look his father-figure in the eye.

Part of him wondered if Alfred would regonize the boy that had laid in the hospital with a hole in his stomach all those years ago, though he doubted it. The butler had only seen the Other once, in between a flurry of panic and nurses and he had been far more focused on whatever the fuck Bruce had been done. Now Jack was older, more refined, and very quickly mutating into... something.

The billionaire's stomach twisted painfully as he laid Jack's limp body on the table. Sometime during the ride back he'd passed out, still twitching slightly in his sleep and only regaining consciousness for small amounts of time.

Alfred hesitated with some scissors and a scalpel, at first prepared to cut alway his clothes, but now uncertain at the strange discolouring staining the Other's skin. Under the lights, Bruce could see that Jack's black hair had begun to go a deep shade of green that he hadn't noticed in the shadows. The colouring itself was very uneven, being almost its normal shade around his ears, a discoloured, blood tinged forest green around the roots and almost lime near the ends that were pasted to the mess of his face and neck.

Bruce took the scissors and began to cut away the fabric, revealing more and more of the burned skin. Now that the acid had time to react to cool air, it had distorted most of him, leaving very little of him untouched. Some areas were still the cracking, wrinkled white while others were bright red and bleeding as Bruce worked. 

After a moment, Alfred joined in, careful to discard clothes and beginning to set up bottles of fluids to clean wounds and an IV line. He still looked sickened, but at least he'd seen worse in wars. Not much worse, but it still existed.

Jack came too for a few minutes as they worked to bandage raw limbs. By this point he was almost out of his mind on pain killers, but he still managed to focus slightly on Bruce as he laboured to clean the chemicals off his skin.

"Ttthaa-" The man was cut off in a coughing, hacking fit that sent blood up his mangled throat.

Bruce carded his fingers across his hair lightly, trying to avoid as many injured parts as possible. "Jack, we'll talk later, go back to sleep."

Jack's hand curled on the table for a moment and Bruce brushed his own fingers across it, holding on as gentle as he could. 

The Other's eyes fluttered shut after a moment, and Bruce had to fight past the mauling feeling in his chest to continue to work.

Alfred just watched with an unreadable expression on his face.

~*~

By the time dawn rolled around, the only noises was Jack's laboured breathing and the steady beeping of the machines.

Bruce sat beside the bed, his fingers entwined with his Other's. He'd thrown up not five minutes before, the stress gnawing at him and the questions battling his brain for attention.

What now? 

Jack was probably forever disfigured, and now instantly recognizable. Their system of lure and attack would be pointless if their victims passed along his appearance, which no doubt they would.

They were no longer equal. It slashed at him with iron claws, torn his insides to shreds. What was the point of the Batman if their team of two couldn't go outside? Gotham was an unforgiving city, they would lash out at something was strange looking as Jack.

And while Bruce could hold no claim of vanity, Jack defiantly could. All their combined lives, Jack had been obsessed with completing the perfect image, no matter how bad it looked. To be degraded for his appearance would destroy him faster then any weapon alive. 

If Jack could not go outside, he could not help Bruce and if he couldn't help Bruce, they couldn't complete their plan, and if they couldn't complete their plan-

All was for naught. The training, the traveling. The years of painfully being apart would have been wasted on a childish dream.

Bruce wanted to weep, but he knew he couldn't. When his Other woke up, there was no saying the state he'd be in. He had to be strong.

The path ahead was more cloudy then it had ever been before. For once, for the first time since that painful night in an alley so many years ago, Bruce had no idea what he had to do. 

~*~ 

Jack couldn't talk right away, and if they hadn't been each other, they'd have never gotten anything communicated. He'd swallowed some of the chemicals and they'd torn his throat to pieces, irritated his stomach lining beyond belief. He couldn't eat, he couldn't speak. His hands were still bandaged, soaked and wrapped to preserve the joints and one wrist was in a brace. He'd broken his leg and cracked some ribs as well in the fall from that vat of hell. Between his mass of IV cables and monitoring lines and the yards upon yards of medicine soaked fabric, Bruce could barely see any part of him.

The first day or so, they did nothing but monitor and try to keep him from passing out once a scan determined a concussion. After a few days had passed however, the scans were done and there was nothing to do but wait for things to heal.

That was when the boredom set in.

Jack started with scratching, dragging one of his nails across the steel over and over. Then once the pain had subsided a little, he returned to a constant stream of giggles, mumbling noises under his breath that set Alfred on edge. 

Bruce could see it in his eyes; something had changed. In the few seconds Jack had been under the surface of that chemical tank, something very delicate had snapped. Something Bruce was still holding onto, but Jack had dropped in his attempts to get back to the normal world.

After a week or two (Bruce couldn't keep track, he couldn't bear to think about how long it had been), Jack's hands had gotten well enough to write things down. He scrawled requests for food he threw back up, and then told really bad jokes that Bruce smiled at.

After a while, the Other asked a question; _u gone out as bat?_

Bruce shook his head, knowing he was about to be told off. "No, I have to be in meetings during the day, I want to stay here during the night."

Jack shook his head slightly. _G needs the bat._

There was never any question on what "G" was.

So Bruce went out and left Jack with a comm line so he could hear every crunch of bone as Bruce took out his built up frustration on the unsuspecting criminals.

~*~

Jack takes two months to recover enough to walk from "The Batcave" to the manor above. Alfred gives him looks like he's a stray cat the butler doesn't want around and Bruce gives the old man equally heated glances.

The two lay in Bruce's old room, staring at the posters and faded photographs. Now that Jack's skin has cleared up, his scars are laced upon pure white skin, a shade Bruce had never seen on a human being before. His hair had been cut to clean out some of the more odd shades of green and even out the burnt ends and his eyes have cleared up (though he confesses to poorer vision then before and his hearing isn't that great either from the damage the acid had done).

Jack's been reading Bruce's old novels and comic books, flipping through unread pages and favourites alike. He's been unnaturally quiet since the chemical plant. His Other knows that this is Jack's way of trying to deal, to struggle through whatever has been done to him.

Bruce wants desperately to help, so that's why he picks up one of the comic books - a generic villain vs hero sort of deal, and hangs it in front of Jack's face.

The younger male looks up in curiosity, and gives his Other a little confused glance.

"I have an idea." Bruce tries it on his tongue, throat dry on the prospect that this will go great or horribly.

Jack crawls up one eyebrow in a silent _go on_. So Bruce takes a deep breath and tries to explain, trying to forget that Jack used to know all his thoughts before he said them, because they thought the same.

"Batman is being called violent." He pauses, not sure if that was the best place to start. "I'm... pretty much the worse thing out there at the moment. We... thought people would rally behind a hero, but he isn't _really_ a hero yet..." He gives Jack another glance, who just nods in agreement. He's been watching a lot of TV recently.

"We need... something worse then the Batman. Something worse then the criminals and the gangs. Something for him to fight against."

Jack's face was taking on a thoughtful look. He was catching up, seeing the trains of thought Bruce was taking.

"He needs a villain." And Bruce holds up the comic book, watching Jack's eyes suddenly light up with the idea of _could it be?_

"Jack... will you be my villain?" The billionaire curses himself for not thinking of a better way of phrase that. But it doesn't matter.

Jack sits himself up and gives the Other a deep look. "Bruce, that would have been a lot better on one knee and with a ring." He grabs the cheap paper though and flips through the coloured pages. "But you could be on to something..." 

~*~

"I'll need a costume." Jack muses, modelling himself in a mirror. He'd spent painfully long hours before in the bathroom, going over boxes of stage make-up Bruce had ordered. Some of his skin was darker then the rest, cream coming through in some places. He'd spent ages on that alone, turning the skin an equal shade, covering scars and sleep circles under his eyes.

He'd decked out in eyeliner, lipstick and a lot of hair dye. Then he'd borrowed every single coloured piece of fabric Bruce owned, and was now playing them against his chest, trying to get an idea for what colour scheme to go with.

"You could just go with black." Bruce responded from his collapsed position on his bed. They'd moved back down into Bruce's new bedroom, much to Alfred's great displeasure on letting the riff-raff walk on expensive carpets. Jack's Other had endured many hours so far of humming and debating over things he hadn't bothered with for Batman.

Then again, "Batman" had been built over a decade. They would be building Jack's persona within a couple of months, perhaps just a year.

Jack laid out a silk, deep purple shirt beside Bruce, smoothing his scabbed fingers over the fabric.

"You've got black, I can't do black too."

"Why not? Plenty of villains wore black?"

Jack made a noise in the back of his throat. "And superheros wear bright colors because they're 'good' and stuff. We've got to switch up the status quo, Brucie my man!" He frowned. "I need a theme before I get a costume."

Bruce moaned into the sheets. "Nothing stupid, please?"

Jack blinked innocently. "Are clowns stupid?"

"Yes! No clowns, Jack... Just please no."

~*~

Jack said no to the clown idea. But two days later he dropped a playing card on the table with a devilish jester twirled around the word _Joker._

It fit him well. Non-serious, teasing and laughing. God, Jack's laughter could put the fear of the devil in any self-respecting person.

It was perfect, and Bruce already hated it.

~*~

Jack took very careful measurements and then ordered jackets, suits and vests through some anonymous companies. Thankfully, the great thing about setting up a gig through Bruce Wayne was... well, he couldn't really run out of money very easily. 

Then they spent all their waking hours inside Bruce's new Batcave, building tools and practising fights. Fox's stuff was separated into two piles for sharing. They both knew they couldn't share their techniques, but that didn't mean they couldn't co-ordinate their attacks.

_Joker._ It rolled over Bruce's tongue rather uncomfortably, sounding both strange and familiar all at once. Batman and the Joker. Bats and Joker. Joker and _Batsy_ , as Jack had taken to teasing him over the past few days.

Thankfully, Bruce ended that one most of the time by replying with _Jackie_. His Other just made lots of faces at that.

They practiced and practiced until they would collapse exhausted on mats and then Bruce dragged his ass up, got in his suit and rolled off to fight crime and Jack stayed behind and helped him over the computers, while doodling some ideas for schemes and plots and so on in that old, weathered journal he still had.

They both had schemes - wonderful ideas and plans, but they had also made an agreement. They wouldn't tell.

It was like the biggest game they'd ever played, with the citizens and criminals of Gotham as pawns and the city itself their playing board. It was beyond exciting. Sometimes they had no choice but to fall back and look at each other, as if to say _are we really going to do this?_

In years to come, people would accuse the Batman of creating his own villains. That his desire to become a costumed vigilante would drive others to similar, if opposite results.

And in all of their debates and guessing and multi-million dollar book sales, none of them would ever be able to guess that while the rest may have been up in the air, one fact was not.

And that was simply this; in Bruce Wayne's desperation, he had created, paid for and encouraged the Joker's creation.


	5. Chapter 5

James Gordon sipped his third cup of coffee and made a sound that was halfway between utter bliss and slight displeasure. If he hadn’t been sitting where he was sitting, at the time he was sitting, he wouldn’t have included that displeasure at all.

But it was past eleven at night, they’d been raking in Batman-captured criminals like leaves in the fall and he was _beyond_ tired. He was four hours into overtime because every time he came close to the clock-out box, some constable crawled forward with a pleading look on his face and started whining about the goddamn _Batman_.

It was like dealing with a daycare full of children terrified of the monster under their bed.

Well fuck ‘em. Jim fucking Gordon was going to drink his coffee and there was not going to be a single fucking problem-

“Err… sir, we have a situation.”

_Fuck ‘em all._

“The sky had better be falling, constable.”

“I’m afraid it is far worse then that sir.”

~*~

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen of Gotham’s most… esteemed social class.” The Joker paused and checked his cue cards. It wasn’t that he needed them, just that he liked theatrics. “Oh, I’m sorry, that’s the _other_ group of hostages, my mistake.” He chuckled slightly to himself; some sound that bubbled all the way to a heaving laughing fit that turned the hostages’ blood to ice as they shook from where his dime-a-dozen goons were tying them up.

Gotham’s Museum of Art – not his first choice, but Batsy and him had agreed that cameras and witnesses were needed for this. They needed a jump-start on the rumors and theory. Hence, the rich hostages, sunken down with gold and jewels, and the very, very expensive canvases and sculptures on the walls and in the halls.

The Mayor had been dragged to the front by some henchmen, and was looking utterly terrified at the man before him. Admittedly, this was probably because the Mayor was a coward and not because of anything else. Many of the people in the audience – so to speak – didn’t actually look that frightened. Cautious, but not frightened.

Jack had to admit though; he did look downright devilish.  He’d done his makeup excellently; white skin, cheek-splitting grin with red lips and an even green hair-do. His costume was a purple trench coat that went over a lighter, almost blue shaded jacket with a green vest and under that over a yellow shirt. The fabric was wonderfully cut, incredibly expensive and lined to the brim with all sorts of gadgets Bruce had let him borrow. He’d topped the whole thing off with a set of beautiful knives stolen from the Wayne kitchen.

Knives from which he took one blade now, waving the sharp utensil in front of the quivering man. “Look… Mr. Mayor, I don’t have much of a problem with you, per say… Well, I do, but that’s an issue for another time! You see, I was kinda hoping you’d help me with something.”

“What do you? Is it money, we can give you money!” The coward squealed, much to the displeasure of several office officials that gave him dark looks.

“Ahh… no, but thanks for the offer, I may take you up on it later. You see, I’m looking for a par- _ticular_ person and I sorta-maybe-really need some bait.”

“B-Bait?” Tears were beginning to roll down the Mayor’s cheeks, which was saying something considering some people in the background actually looked rather bored in comparison.

“Yep!” The Joker let lose another round of giggles. “String him, boys.”

The henchmen grabbed a chair from a nearby table and lashed the now screeching official to it, while the hostages began to mutter angrily and weep in some cases behind him.

Joker snagged a backpack clip with a cord to the chair rung and then nodded for a goon to shoot one of the floor-to-ceiling windows. The shattering glass sent up another round of shrieks from the rich folk, and the jester began to drag his victim of choice towards the gasping hole.

He set the back legs into some cracks around the floor and then began to tilt the chair through the opening, wrapping the cord around his hand and bracing his leg against the nearby column. The Mayor began to scream very loudly as he wobbled across the divide, a tune that went well with the wailing police cars and crowds of reporters below them.

“Better hope he shows up soon, Mr. Mayor!” He chirped happily, reveling all too much in the chaos surrounding him.

“Ww-whho dd-do you mm-mean?” Sobbed his hostage.

“Why, the Bat-Man of course!” He cried, giving his other victims a sharp look, as if to say _couldn’t you guess?_ “The boy’s new in town and I’d thought to say hello.” He paused for a moment, surveying a policeman get out of a car and lift up a megaphone to yell something. “Isn’t that just polite of me?”

“But that man is just a myth!” Yelled a hostage behind him. “Its just druggies dreaming up stories for kicks.”

“What are you talking about, they have pictures!” A woman scolded the man. “Its all over the papers.”

“Those are just cries for attention.” Another responded. “Nobody can prove that this so-called man-bat is anything more then a man in a costume-”

“It is _not_ a costume.” Came a growl from behind everyone. “And it’s _Batman_.”

The goons instantly spun around as Joker’s laugh split the air. “Well, well, a little earlier then expected, but what’s a guy to do? _Get ‘im boys!”_ The last part was roared at the thugs, who opened fire at the suited man.

Batman made a dive to the side, avoiding all of the hostages and hiding behind a steel statue. Bullets splattered against the metal and for a moment, Jack’s stomach twisted at the distant sound of bullets hitting chemical tanks, but he shook it off.

Somewhere behind the sparks, one of Bruce’s new batarang shot out and took down one goon. When the others turned to see what had happened, two more batarangs flew out. One screamed as the blade tore his cheek and the other just dropped to the floor in moaning pain.

Then Batman reappeared on the other side of the gunmen, roaring as he took down two more in well-placed attacks. He grabbed the last shooter’s gun, slammed it into his face and dismantled it before the body hit the floor.

The very last goons were standing in front of the hostages, knives swinging between the victims and the vigilante, unable to decide which target to attack. Joker’s giggles increased as he watched it play out, the cord slipping a bit between his gloved fingers and wringing a scream from the Mayor.

Batman turned for a moment to give his Other a look, though nobody would see it for what it was. They both knew they’d have to drop the man for the Joker to be taken seriously.

One goon attacked as Batman looked away, but Bruce just lifted a fist and slammed it into his face as he was moving. Jack let loose another pealing laughter as the man slid to the floor.

The last man hesitated between the gasping crowd and the armored man built like a tank. He decided to bolt for it instead of doing something, only to be taken out by another batarang and slamming head-first into the wall; knocking himself out.

“My, my, Batman. You’re _good._ ” Joker purred excitedly, whole body shivering in the excitement of watching his Other work. “I don’t believe we’ve been formally introduced, I’m called the Joker-”

“I know who you are.” He rasped, voice lowered so it wasn’t recognizable right away. “Put the Mayor back on the floor.”

“Hhhmmmm, I think not.” He responded, another fit of laughter overtaking him before he dropped the cable.

The good news for the mayor was that the window was only the second story, and there were plenty of bushes below to break his fall. The bad news was that he landed on his back and the chair splintered, driving a sharp spike through a leg or an arm – Joker didn’t really care, but he saw the blood and shrieked in giggles again.

A fist slammed into him, cutting his mirth off short as the Batman attacked.

They’d practiced this a hundred times over, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t send a thrill every time they battle. All those years they had not fought because if they were the same, the Other to the Other, they had to be allies.

It had simply never occurred to them that their partnership would work better as enemies. But now that they had started, it felt amazing, like the world had come together, for centuries had been building just for this one event.

The Joker and the Batman. It had to be God’s own wish, that these two halves to a whole would be joined in such a way.

Somewhere in the fight, it moved past scripted. Bruce landed a blow that cracked his wrist – the weak one, damn him – and Joker got in a rather nice stab wound with the knife he still carried. Batman gave him a blow that send him sprawling into a rather flimsy art sculpture and Jack managed to actually make the massive man _stumble_.

The whole thing was peppered with the hushed gasps of the rich social class and their reporters and Joker’s high-pitched laughter fits, which continued right up until he was gasping for air and could barely breath through the struggle. Bats however, seemed to be doing fine.

What seemed like forever was really only a few minutes, which was why when Gordon burst into the room, gun waving and a fan of armed police officers behind him, it knocked them both off guard.

“Hands above your head!” He yelled, expression showing that very clearly, he didn’t want to be crashing a fight between a clown and tank dressed as a bat, in an art gallery at eleven thirty at night.

“Well, shit.” Joker slowly raised his hands. “Hey, lovely night we’re having-“ He turned to look for Bruce, but the Batman was gone, a silhouette making its way across the sky outside the window.

Double shit.

~*~

“We’ve got this… ‘Joker’ guy.” The constable mumbled, eying the screens before him and shuddering at the weirdly dressed man on the monitor.

“No sign of the Batman then?” The police Commissioner frowned at Gordon. “I thought I said to catch them both.”

“He made out through an open window.” Gordon replied warily.

“A second story window?” The Commissioner questioned.

There was a pause as the two tried to think of a way to put this well. “It would appear the Batman is capable of… short distance gliding, coupled with wire acceleration and climbing.” Gordon admitted at last.

“Which means?”

“He… has a cape, sir. He… flew.” The constable offered helpfully, a pained look on his face.

The Commissioner had begun to take on a look best associated with the phrase _what have you been smoking?_   “Well, please tell me we have units out looking for him?”

“We’re trying sir, it’s just a bit difficult because of the Joker.”

“I don’t give a damn about this ‘Joker’.” Came the answering growl. “Figure out who he really is, and cart him off to prison for terrorism or something. Just find the goddamn Batman already.”

There was only time for quick nods before their superior walked out to bug somebody else.

“Well… you heard the man.” Gordon moaned, already thinking about where his fourth cup of coffee would be coming from. “Call the lab again and see if they got his prints anywhere. I’ll go see about the patrols…”

“Sure thing, sir.”

~*~

The office was almost completely dark at this point, a fact Gordon was forever grateful for as he sank back into his chair and contemplated a quick nap.

“You won’t find anything on the Joker.” Somewhere behind him, a deep voice suddenly spoke up, jolting the police officer to his feet.

“Who’s there?!” He tried to snap on the desk lamp, but another in the corner was turned on for him. Standing beside it was a massive figure in black armor – and a cape.

The Batman was about 100% more terrifying up close.

“The Joker has no prints or records in any database.” The vigilante continued. “He is also highly disturbed; I would believe it best if he was transferred to Arkham Asylum as soon as possible.”

“I’m sorry- how do you know this?”

The Batman paused for a moment, raking his gaze over some articles about himself pinned to the wall. “I’ve been aware of him for some time. He is obsessed with drawing me out in confrontation. Why; I do not know. But understand me when I say this man is almost completely out of his mind and a psychological exam should be conducted immediately.”

Gordon hesitated for a moment, weighing his desire to arrest the man and take his advice equally. The force had been all over the place trying to bring him in, but the Batman had done nothing but help.

The Joker, on the other hand…

“Can I trust you?” He asked, moving slowly towards his own cheap coffee maker. The Batman’s eyes followed him the whole way over. There was a lengthy pause as the cup of joe brewed before the man in black softly replied; “Probably not. But you’re a good person. You need help. I can provide it.”

“In exchange for…?”

“Keep your men off my tail. We both know there is no force in this city that can stop the disease that is spreading. The police here are corrupt, too busy to help. I can work faster and better then anyone else.”

Gordon frowned. “That can’t be denied… but look at this Joker. You’re here for a few months, dressing up and giving yourself a name and someone else follows – but with entirely different intentions. What’s to say that if we let you roam around, that more won’t come?”

“The Joker is an isolated incident. He’s deranged and has a personal vendetta against me. You took him in easy today, he’s an amateur in a costume.” Silently, Bruce apologized to Jack for trying to ruin his image. They’d have time to rebuild stuff later.

Gordon sat down and stared at his coffee without drinking it. They both waited in silence, contemplating things and waiting for the other.

“Fine.” Gordon replied, wincing slightly as the coffee burned his throat. “I’ll help you, you help me, alright?”

“Thank you.” The Batman whispered, and then he turned and in one fluid motion, leapt from the window.

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm having some issues with writing, so if this chapter or some future ones seem a little jumpy, its just because I suck at writing linear stories.

The Batman hit the presses with all the force of one of his own patented kicks. He’d been heard of before – an urban myth, so to speak; the sort of thing kids dared themselves to chant in the mirror and wait to appear – but once the _Mayor_ got involved…

Well, that was a whole other kettle of fish. A big kettle of fish with lovely, full-color photos on the front pages due to reporters getting some very nice shots during the Joker vs Batman battle. (Because really, that was it was all about)

At first they reacted with terror – why had someone held a whole group of very rich people hostage, only to basically let them go unharmed? Then it turned to amazement as the slightly younger audience caught on. It was a game; the hero and the villain. The good guy and the bad guy.

It was just like an exceptionally violent comic book. And the people loved it. Batman went from being feared and hated overnight to… still feared, but now loved as well.

They had a protector, an ironclad soldier willing to risk life and limb to save their city. If anyone had been keeping track of morale (and they generally didn’t, because that was bad for morale) it would have risen substantially. For once, Gotham had actually managed to produce something that had a positive side-effect. The sense of pride throughout the city had never been higher.

Fortunately for the Batman, the citizens – and criminals – were still scared shitless of him, which made his job easier when everyone just took a couple of cellphone pictures and made a run for it. He tried very hard not to get any pleasure out of being held so highly in the Gothamites opinions. He also tried hard not to “accidently” pose whenever cameras went off.

Working alone had been something he adjusted to during Jack’s recovery, but that didn’t mean the streets weren’t all that much the lonelier. And sometimes even Bruce had to admit; the idea of fighting the Joker, possibly forever – was a damning concept. He’d spent so long imagining how fighting crime with Jack would be, and then out of nowhere, it just turned on its head and became a whole new animal.

Plus Arkham looked horrible, even from where Bruce perched on the gothic arches of the old building, watching a single police officer escort the handcuffed villain towards the main entrance. Bargaining for Arkham instead of Blackgate had been easy, the Joker made a very convincing case of insanity, even more so when they couldn’t dig up a single piece of information concerning his past.

Arkham made things easier. A hospital Batman could move through easily, a hospital Jack could use to make his reputation.

A hospital they could break the Joker out of with alarming ease.

Which was why Bruce followed the orderly through the hallways, into a medium security wing and watched Joker make faces at the colorless walls and drooling patients. They had a plan, a multistep plan that would take the better part of the week.

Batman stayed just long enough for the jester to get settled, giving him a small signal that left the man grinning and giving a tiny wave through the door, then he bugged the room and left, all too aware that this was the first time they’d seen each other since the art gallery.

But that wasn’t the important part; the important part was what happened next.

~*~

The Joker lasted three days in Arkham, This was along enough to torment and creep out the majority of his wing’s patients, terrorize the orderlies and guards and get a starting evaluation.

Which went horribly. Afterwards, five different doctors reviewed the case and tried desperately to make head or tails of the Joker’s condition.

By the end of the third day, all they could agree on was that the Joker was seriously fucked. And shortly after making this known, the man of the hour escaped.

That would have been bad. But he made it worse; using a broken plastic fork and some rather clever timing (and help from the friendly neighborhood bat) he made his escape through two guards, who didn’t come out the ordeal breathing, and then bolted somewhere for the city.

Panic set in rather quickly. Rumors had begun to circle that maybe the Joker _had_ planned to kill everyone at the art gallery, and the Batman had just interrupted. The guards were mourned, the city tried to very discreetly not let the rest of the world in on the fact that they’d just lost the Joker and the police started a manhunt.

It was going to be a grand old time.

~*~

Gordon had been debating for quite a while now on how to get in contact with the Batman. He’d found packages of information left on his desk most mornings, but had yet to speak to the caped vigilante again. He’d also begun to snoop among the troops to see if anyone else was supportive of the ‘dark knight’.

Gordon had spend a lot of time and a fair bit of money to put together what was no doubt the _stupidest_ idea ever. Of the five or so constables that he’d entrusted with his knowledge of Batman, most of them had been passive. One however, had enthusiastically suggested a way of getting in touch with him.

A really, really stupid way. Gordon was convinced this whole city was on a superhero kick. There seemed to be a bit of a theme going on right now.

So on their time off (not that they had much) they’d built and tested a… signal.

A bat signal.

The constable in question had cackled gleefully at the finished product, having tested it inside a large warehouse. Gordon had to admit, it certainly worked fine, but _God_ , the whole thing was so surreal.

And he was not looking forward to being the one to explain this when the man in black showed up.

Gordon sat there for a good forty-five minutes before there was a slightly surprised question from the shadows. “What is this?”

Gordon cleared this throat rather awkwardly. “I’d just like to go on record; this was not my idea.”

The Batman raked his eyes over the spotlight and then to the symbol being projected onto the very tall, but blank face of a building above them. “If you’d wanted to meet, you could have just said so.”

“Well, you didn’t exactly leave a number.”

“Notes would have sufficed.”

Gordon scolded at the caped back. “What if I need to get in touch with you quickly?”

Batman gave him a sideways glance, slightly questioning.

“We may need your help with stuff from time to time. Especially this Joker business. He’s more dangerous then we first thought.”

“I’ll have some more information within the next day or two.” Batman responded, before eying the spotlight again.

“If you don’t think it’ll work, we can take it down-”

“No, I think it’s a good idea.” Batman strode forward and carefully pressed a hand across the steel casing. “It’ll tell everyone that I’m out there, that I’m being called to fight crime.”

Gordon hadn’t thought about that. “Reassurance for the masses?”

“And fear for the criminals.” Batman seemed pleased with this one. “Thank you, I’m sure we’ll make use of this. I’ll keep an eye out from now on.”

Gordon just nodded. “So, anything about this Joker character?”

~*~

“Err… Brucie, I hate to be the carrier of bad news, but I think we’re behind schedule.” The clown frowned at his reflection in the mirror. The police had seen fit to confiscate his effects, meaning he’d had to fall back on a different set of clothes he’d ordered. Not that he supposed there was anything wrong with appearing a bit different every time he went out, but he _had_ liked that coat…

Bruce sat on their apartment bed, rotating his arm from a stiff shoulder. “I know; the police have been a little more diligent in their duties then I thought they would.” The caped crusader frowned out their cracked window, watching as the sun began to crawl its way into the sky with all the enthusiasm of a hungover partier. He hadn’t gone home that night, or the night before. Which had a lot less to do with an over abundance of criminals and a lot more to do with one very angry butler.

Alfred hadn’t exactly kicked him out, but it wasn’t like there was more then one white-skinned, green-haired man hanging around Gotham. Considering the overall situation – sudden return from the dead, rescue and boarding of a mysterious disfigured man, unusual tendency to leap from rooftops wearing a bat mask and a cape – he didn’t really _blame_ him. It was more of a minor inconvenience.

After all, their apartment was missing some very important parts – such as a couch, stove or working bathroom sink. It left a lot to be desired, though after a night of terrifying the guilty, it wasn’t really that big of a deal.

His Other joined him in the bedroom, makeup removed and hair still damp from the shower, the green faded back to the acid bite of discoloration it was now. The smaller man had a thoughtful look on his face, hands rubbing a towel over his head. “Could we throw them off our trail some way?”

“Maybe, but I feel like we should hang back a little.” Bruce fell onto the pillows, huffing angrily at the ceiling. “Might not be in our best interest to show all of our cards just yet…”

Jack made a noise that said he agreed, but wish he didn’t, then he crawled over the covers and flopped down beside the Other. “I’ll just stick to runnin’, I guess.”

He yawned and wrapped one arm weakly across Bruce’s stomach, burying his face in the billionaire’s neck. “We’ll figure some’in out tomorrow…”

“Though… Bruce?”

“Yeah?”

“Remind me… gotta ask you something ‘bout cards later too. Got this idea…”

~*~

“You know… I’ve never liked fish.” The Joker made a rather twisting expression at the restaurant guests before him. It appeared that the dish of the night was calamari, complete with blackish seaweed beds and spices that nobody had heard of, mostly because they didn’t taste good on anything else.

The guests gasped in alternating horror and excitement. It said something about Gotham that people got thrilled over hostage situations. Joker, who had, after all, lived in Gotham his whole life, knew all too well that the powerful lure of gossip overtook even the most basic desire for human survival.

“All right, we’ll keep this simple, girls and boys and anyone of non-specified gender orientation… jewelry, watches, wallets and phones into the bags. Let’s be quick, so your food won’t spoil and I won’t throw up.” The clown gestured towards some costumed goons, who started going around and prodding people with guns.

A rather cocky looking businessman – with not one, but _two_ young ladies at his table, sneered at the villain. “Are we supposed to be scared of you? You’re just some bastard in a stupid costume.”

“Now that’s just rude. What’d I ever do to you?”  The Joker gave him a large grin, all teeth and mirth, a sadistic curl to his blood-red lips.

The man scowled back, giving a rather timid goon that had approached him the death store. “You can’t even dress right, let alone steal properly. You look like a fa-“

His words cut off with a collection of shrieks as Joker drove a gun under his jaw, successfully cutting off any negative slurs. “You know, I don’t think it really matters who or what I am, you jackass. Because sexual orientation doesn’t exactly factor into whether or not I can blow your goddamn head off, got it?”

The jackass in question suddenly seemed to be rethinking his lady impressing right about now, as he tried to look down his nose at the weapon and only succeeded in making himself cross-eyed.

“Now, you should _all_ know, I’m not really here to kill any of you. Steal? Yeah, I’m a little strapped for cash at the moment. But none of you are really my… type? I guess we’ll go with that.” The jester removed his gun slowly. “We done here boys?”

The henchmen, pleased at the quick success and bags full of cash, nodded in earnest, and just as quickly as he arrived, the Joker was gone.

After all, he had other appointments to attend to.

~*~

“You robbed a high-end restaurant and a gun store?” Bruce gave the clown on his lap a rather odd look. “Those are… completely unrelated.”

“They are right _now_.” Jack gave him a _duh_ sort of look, rolling a small handgun over and over as he surveyed the stock he’d smuggled into Wayne manor. “Is Jeeves still pissed at you?”

“ _Alfred_. And yes, he is. You shouldn’t be here right now. He’s… not very understanding at the moment. I don’t want to explain too much.”

“You don’t like guns either.” Purred the other, slotting a magazine into the weapon.

Bruce just made a face. A _if you don’t take out that ammo, you’re on the couch forever, sonny boy_ sort of face.

Jack was terrible at facial expressions.

He gave another rumbling purr, before turning the gun once more and slotting it gently against his other’s head, freezing Bruce quicker then the tough Asian winters he had endured abroad.

“Don’t.” Bruce choked, fear _almost_ crossing his face. Bruce didn’t feel fear, he didn’t feel anger or frustrate or sadness and oh God, _bang_.

“Do you trust me?” Jack whispered, finger hovering over the trigger. His green eyes were oddly soft, his face still adored with the makeup of the Joker. It was like standing on the edge of a blade – the illusion of the eye telling him this was a man now his enemy, and the callings of his ears telling him this was his lover, his best friend, his _Other_.  The Other who could do no wrong, could never hurt him, who would understand him forever and ever because that was the way the world had created them.

The Other who had just pointed a gun at his head, safety off, finger on the trigger – ready, for all intents and purposes, to kill him.

Bruce couldn’t think of an answer, couldn’t possibly hope to voice things they had _agreed_ never to voice. Things they had not said but said all the same in the alleyways of their youth, before Bruce had wandered and Jack had fallen. Before things had gotten fuzzy around the edges from trauma and the failings of their own mental functions.

Bruce slowly lifted another handgun from the collection decorating their bed and slotted it exactly against the scar on Jack’s stomach. The one his father had put there with a gun not unlike this one.

“Do you trust _me?_ ” He rasped, trying to remember the training the League had given him, before remembering they hadn’t taught him how to deal with anything like this _at all_.

Jack grinned, but it was as stiff as Bruce, as he shifted slightly against his own demons. They could have lain there forever, talking but not, because obviously it was a yes. It just wasn’t a yes they were allowed to say out loud.

Jack slid forward and kissed him lightly, in the oddest display of softness his other had ever seen.

“You’ll see soon.” He mumbled, twisting away from Bruce’s gun and dropping his own on the covers beside them. He shifted for a moment before deciding lying on top of the Other was preferable. “It’ll all become clear.”

“Your master scheme.” Bruce mused, a slight smirk on his own face, as he wrapped Jack in the blankets and reached for the lamp.

“Yeah, better watch out.” He smiled, rubbing a smear of white stage makeup across the sheets as he scratched his face. “Joker’s in the town now. Gotta hide your valuables and your wives. And… all that other stuff I’d probably steal. ‘m working on it.”

“Jack, let me sleep. I’ve got to get up at ten.”

“Just for you sweetpea.” The clown stared at Bruce’s face, as he passed out with quick military training.

“Just for you, luv.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To clarify if you're using Jack and Bruce's naps as a passage of time. They are normally sleeping at odd times. First time in this chapter was dawn to eight or something, I think? And second time was probably... early evening to just before night paroling.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm terribly sorry for the month long absense. Exams, moving, writer's block and RL issues hit me like a truck. While this is my longest chapter so far (not by much), it is probably also slightly confusing, because I have a bad cold and its mucking with my processing. Just... use your imagination if words don't make sense. I don't have a beta. Everything downwards of streetfight (you'll know which one) is written with said cold, so that's probably the worse of it. Also, FF.net's segment break problem as been resolved - if AO3 sees a change, it was because I'm too lazy to do two different types. We're sticking with O-O-O.
> 
> WARNING; semi-creepy crime scene?

Bruce sets aside a part of the Batcave for investigations.

He knows that Gordon and his team of fairly trustworthy cops could be left to handle some of the work, but this is a game between Jack and him.

It requires both of them to work at it.

He pins a map of the city to the wall and starts to mark down every location the Joker has hit, every place he’s been spotted. He examines evidence left at the scenes – scraps of fabric, knives taken from his person during the arrest, playing cards.

There is a lot of playing cards. In fact, Bruce has half a deck here – not the actual cards, which are still in the Gotham’s police evidence locker, but photocopies – and they’ve all been dropped or left behind at attacks or raids or general terrorizing.

Jack had left the night before, in full getup. Since then, he’d robbed a tourist store on _Main street_ , a house in the Narrows and another one in the west end (both with the residents in – that was no accident). He’d been seen in five different places throughout the city in five hours, including a Starbucks, where he’d ordered a cup of coffee, paid with a hundred dollar bill and left the change, all while holding the barista and other customers at gunpoint.

He’d run past the police station, and had only avoided capture because the officers on a smoke break were so stunned they hadn’t realized what had happened until he had disappeared again. He’d taken a newspaper from a newsstand, but hadn’t paid this time.

Every place he went, he dropped a card, or left it tucked somewhere that the investigation unit found quickly.

Bruce pinned these onto the map as well, frowning at the seemingly random splattering across the Gotham streets.

Jack was leading them to something-

 _No_. The _Joker_ was leading them to something. And it wasn’t Bruce following, Batman was.

This was beyond childhood sweethearts now. The Others were battling, and the city was their Normandy Landings. They would storm the streets, attack from the shadows and the air, leaving no criminal or corrupt official untouched.

They would bombard the unworthy until they had no chance but to surrender. It was Gotham – nobody could ever leave.

Bruce spent over three hours in the cave, examining every single piece of the game he could find, but little turned up. He knew who Jack was. He knew the ultimate purpose behind the playing. He knew where the Joker got his supplies, where he was sleeping, where he was getting his food and medicine for any received injuries. He even knew where and from whom he was hiring his henchmen.

He just didn’t know where the Joker would strike next. And his job was to prevent the Joker from doing anything dangerous to other people. He had to catch him, he had to make sure he didn’t kill anyone… well, at least to the public he did. That was the Batman’s role; the savior for the innocent and forgotten.

He’d protect them, because that was his job now. And he’d ignore the twisting in his gut from the urge to just get _rid_ of everyone who’d hurt and wound, anyone who’d defiled the city.

He wanted to kill so _badly_.

Bruce closed his eyes against the map, tried to settle down into a meditation, tried to calm the urges sliding through him faster then he could taste them.

A beep sounded to his right, the computer chirping an alert.

Bruce opened his eyes. A message blinked on the screen, a feed that had just hit up the “Joker” keyword the program was looking for.

A news article stared back at him, posted only a few minutes ago.

JOKER SHOOTS INTO CROWED STREET, KILLS ONE

 _Ah_. Bruce thought, moving to pull up the full story. _There you are_.

O-O-O

“One playing card, a Glock 23 hangun left at the scene – no fingerprints or evidence of any kind – and one abandoned getaway car with a confused driver.” Gordon closed the case file and sighed. “Victim was Mary Brown, single mother, waitressed at a 24 hour dinner called “Mo’s Coffee” – seriously, who names these things? – known drug record, been arrested five times, two for child abuse, had three credit cards in her purse under different names, we’re checking them now.”

Gordon paused. “Her kids are at the station, they’ve spent the last half hour talking about how much they hate her. And we tracked down the father; apparently she’d turned him away for whatever reason. He’s clean.”

“The Joker fired into a crowd of over a hundred people and managed to kill the only drug addict child abuser there?” Batman lowered his own copy of the file and gave the police officer a hard stare.

“Apparently. Well. We don’t know if that was the only drug addict – probably not – but-” Gordon cut himself off with a shrug. “It was either an unlucky shot or he did it on purpose. But random shootings make more sense then stalking does, if we consider style.”

“He may have picked the target then. Something tells me he’s planning something, even if he doesn’t look like it. We should assume he’s going to do the opposite of what we expect.”

Gordon made a face and turned to put down the file. “God, this job was a lot easier when it was just murderers and gang members running around. Now there’s you and this clown-”

The caped crusader was gone when the cop turned back around.

“I… really hope he doesn’t make a habit of that.”

O-O-O

The sun had barely gone down and already Batman had broken up three crimes, leaving tips on the police line as to the location of the handcuffed criminals. But the normal punks and weirdos wandering around held little interest for him tonight.

For the Batman was hunting. He knew without a single doubt that the Joker’s plan would be completed within the next few days. His knowledge that he had to let it play out for the sake of their personas was now wrestling with… something else.

The Bat wanted to save people. Something inside of Bruce had shifted, a once black force had turned its eyes to the goal of salvation. Within the space of a week, something had grown apart, established itself. Something that hadn’t been there in the months before, when he’d first gone out.

It was like a whole new person was being created, something that was strangely enough – _good_ – and Bruce wasn’t entirely sure how to deal with it, or if he could _stop it_.

He made a mental note to talk to Jack about it later, since he had begun to notice the signs in his eyes when he looked in the mirror. The same differences he’d seen in Jack’s eyes after he’d crawled from that tank. Something was changing – all the trauma and accidents that had happened so far, nothing was comparing to their shifting minds as they took on new roles.

 _And who would have thought that a costume could solve what dead parents couldn’t?_ Bruce mused, preferring a perfect aerial takedown on two unexpecting muggers. The victim, whose phone had already been in his hand to hand over, managed to get a rather lovely picture of Batman punching the oldest mugger in the face before he bolted for it.

Batman finished handcuffing the criminals and alerting the police once again, only to be interrupted by a quiet coughing.

The Joker was standing before him, a coil of rope over his shoulder, a portable gas tank in one hand and a lighter raised to a cigarette between his teeth in the other hand.

“Lovely night for beatin’ thugs in the face, is it not?” He purred, a spark of delight and amusement in his eyes.

Bruce eyed the gas and lighter with mild distaste. Apparently arson was going to be added to the Joker’s rapidly expanding list of crimes. “When you said you were exploring alternate ideas, this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.”

“I’m thinking of it like bingo.” The clown drawled, a lazy grin splitting his cheeks. “Gotta get all the squares!” A small giggle escaped him, the gas sloshing in the canister.

“A game.” Bruce breathes. The autumn air seems to still and swirl around him. Suddenly they aren’t just two men, standing and discussing _bingo_ , of all things. They were enemies, they were warriors, standing and defending their lines, their soldiers behind them raising their banners. _Justice_ and crime, chaos and control, toeing the line, their faces raised to their goals.

Joker saw what Batman saw. Jack was gone, the clean, white face of immorality was staring back at him. Bruce’s own desires – to play as the Joker played – vanished like morning mist. Steel resolve began to circle his veins.

He stood straighter, prowled to the side, began to circle. The Joker waited, watched, shifted his weight to better follow the path of the caped crusader. His gaze was eager – he _wanted_ the fight. In fact, the Joker was setting down his canister, putting his cigarette out against a nearby lamppost. The rope was dropped beside the arson ammo. The slender villain rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck, a slow grin spreading across his sharp features.

For a moment, they paused. If there was anyone watching, they were hidden from view. The thugs were out cold. The cold streets of Gotham were their stage, the streetlights their only backing. The only noise was the crunch of gravel and glass beneath their feet.

Batman cracked his knuckles and rolled his fingers into fists. Joker lifted a knife from his pocket and began to pace back and forward, speed edging his steps, jitteriness began to course through his frame. He wanted, wanted wanted wantedwanted to fight, to hurt and to hunt.

So the Joker leapt first, laughter running through him like its own type of energy. For a split second before they collided Batman’s only thought was _God_ , he’s _savage_.

Then his ears filled with a roar, and the Bat took over, flooded his head with stream, clean-cut data, information pouring through every cell of him, telling him exactly what he needed to know to take the Joker _down_.

Fighting the clown was harder then it seemed. The Batman had a hundred pounds on him easy – plus heavy-duty body armor, visor, cowl, a lovely range of weapons – but the Joker was all limbs and energy, endless, endless energy. He had the advantage of stamina and speed. Any moment the Bat almost had a hold on him, the clown slipped like jello between his fingers.

They crossed that street a hundred times, chasing and throwing, stomping and slapping, working up a breathless routine through which Joker still managed to laugh and taunt, mocking and yelling up a storm.

Once or twice, as Batman lunched back and forth trying hard to just _hit_ the damn bastard, he caught sight of an audience that had gathered on the far ends of the street, the edger citizens of Gotham coming out of the shadows to see a show at all hours of the night.

The Joker staggered to a halt across the road, swaying on his feet from the blows Batman had landed. “Oh Batsy, we could do this _all_ night, really.” And he grinned, teeth bared in an almost vampirism manner. “But I’ve got an appointment.”

Bruce had stopped to catch his breath, and listen to whatever the clown had to say, but he stilled even further at his enemy’s words.

“An appoint-“ A thundering roar split the air behind them, the night sky’s lighting up as somewhere, a building went up in flames.

“What did you DO!?” Batman screamed at Joker, dragging the momentarily stunned villain up into the air by his lapels. “How many people did you just _kill_ -“

“Nobody!” The clown shrieked in laughter, his whole body heaving in fits of giggles. “That building wasn’t even _finished_.” Bruce cut off the end of his speech with one fist around his throat. “You _bastard-_ ”

There was a small part of him that briefly registered the pain at the back of his skull. Another that noted the texture of pavement against his chin. A tiny voice whispered that his vision was going.

The Joker leaned down to his prone body. “Oh Batsy, give this to the boss man, will you?” Something was tucked into his belt. And then, in a complete cliché, everything went black.

O-O-O

“You should know, I technically have a warrant for your arrest.” Gordon said it with a thin layer in his voice that sounded like tired and boredom that had sat in the fridge for three days, and then been microwaved for too long.

“Urg.” Bruce swatted at his vision a bit, trying to rub his face through the cowl.

Oddly enough, he didn’t remember falling asleep in the police station. But lo and behold, he was spread across the roof, the bat signal alight above him. In a half-formed oval around him, there was the highest ranking officers of Jim Gordon’s loyal group – the grim-faced Cripus Allen, a bemused Harvey Bullock, homicide detective Renee Montoya and district-attorney Harvey Dent. Not to mention the man himself, James Gordon.

“Also, a bunch of random buildings just blew up. You slept through it.” Bullock chewed a cigar between yellow teeth and gave the caped crusader a dirty look. Bruce vaguely recalled Gordon mentioning Bullock’s shady reputation and “bad cop” routine.

“It was the Joker.” The Batman stumbled to his feet. “We were fighting earlier-“

 _His belt_. Jack had tucked something in his belt right before he passed out. His hands immediately began to pat down every compartment, looking for an irregularity.

Stuck between two batarangs was a playing card. The back of it was decorated with a black gothic design. The others had been blue, red, orange and a variety of bright colors. A break in the pattern was sure not to be good. He glanced above the card to see Gordon’s horrified expression.

He turned the card over and stilled at the ace staring back at him.

“Our teams at some of the explosions found queens and kings. We caught on and checked some of his earlier locations as well, he had left some there that we missed.” Rasped Gordon. “He’s building up to something, this is the finale.”

“There’s only a few hours until daylight.” Dent handed Bruce a large file. “We’re missing two queens, two kings and three aces. We estimate he’ll probably use between three or four cards for the rest of the pre-finale, and then the rest for whatever he’s building up to.”

Batman nodded and tried to shake off the odd feeling brought on by the fact that Gordon’s team had figured out what he’d already known.

“You may want to get a move on.” Sighed Gordon. “The Joker’s still on the loose, and worse, he seems to have recruited henchmen. At the last bombsite, we found a dead goon, dressed up sloppily like a clown.”

“A clown? You’ve got to be kidding me.” Batman groaned as he began to flip though Dent’s file.

“Bad hair dye, bad makeup, bad clothes.” Gordon confirmed. “There’s a photo somewhere in there.”

Bruce found himself longing oddly for the days where Jack had sat at his computer and fed him information about what was going on in the city at any given moment.

Joker’s next move would have to happen soon, but where would the clown be? Would he go after criminals or innocents, buildings or people, items of value or cheap trinkets? The high-and-mighty business district or the Gotham slums?

A double static crackle interrupted his muses and the quiet discussion of Gordon’s people. One was from the portable police scanner one of the police officers was carrying, while the other was from the Batman’s cowl.

He pressed a finger to the pressure sensitive volume control on the side of his mask, while Allen lifted his own device and turned up the noise for the others to listen to.

“… Joker sighted at the corner of 6th and Jubilee…”

Gordon noticed Batman listening into his own channel and a look of semi-horror overtook the senior detective as he realized the caped crusader was tapping their feeds.

Batman flipped through the file as quickly as he could, committing as much as he could to photographic memory. Dent and Bullock began to argue over whether to call the resident SWAT team.

He waited until everyone had turned their backs before dropping the file and leaping from the roof, his cape spread behind him like a massive shadow.

He barely even managed to hear Montoya yell something about him disappearing like a damn ghost before he grabbled up onto a high-rise.

O-O-O

The corner of 6th and Jubilee did not host the Joker, but it did have a group of what Batman could only describe as goons, dressed up as stereotypical clowns, complete with… tutus?

They were performing what looked like an incredible butchered ballet performance, seemingly split fifty-fifty between nervous and bored. There was a loose ring of police cars and officers looking intensely confused at the whole performance.

Batman perched as high as he could, trying his best to gain a complete view of everything he could. Bruce had little doubt that the Joker had probably made a bolt for it by now. But on a night like this, he’d surely been here for a reason.

The performance was being danced in front of a pawn store – to be exact, “The Diamond King”. The front door had a playing card taped to the door, face down, but Batman didn’t need to see it to know what it was.

So instead, he crept around the crowd and slid through the back door. The entire store was dark, considering the hour, and smelled like dusty furniture and very strong pine.

The register counter had been cleared off, the former impulse purchases and trinkets all knocked to the floor. The glass top was smeared with traces of blood, shards of metal from the register sprinkled amongst it. Settled in the middle was a stack of logbooks.

The first flip through didn’t reveal much – until he quickly noticed a pattern of names selling things that were much more expensive then anyone who frequented pawnshops should own.

A fence. The Joker had given him a fence. But why? If the Joker kept targeting criminals, eventually the police were going to catch on, and may label him as a vigilante, which wasn’t per their agreement at all-

A muffled thump sounded from behind him. Bruce cast a weary eye on the closed door leading to the owner’s office. Either Joker had stuck around for another confrontation, or…

The moment he pushed open the door, the smell of pine hit him in a wave. Hung from the ceiling – on what was possibly hundreds of tacks, were car air fresheners.

And on the floor, were the mangled corpses of he could only guess was the owner’s family.

He recognized Jack’s style immediately. He hadn’t seen his Other kill often – but he’d still seen it, and the clean wounds to the quick, most painless death he could offer were obviously there, under a coating of post-humorous stabbings. The family themselves – a wife, and a couple of teenage kids - were laid out in various angles, heads twisted towards the door so the first thing anyone would see was their slashed faces, massive “grins” (a style, Bruce noted in the part of his brain that was trying not to hyperventilate, that closely resembled a “Glasgow Grin”) smiling up at him, eyes open wide in permanent terror.

The owner himself was tied to a chair in the middle of the mess, tear tracks down his cheeks and blood dripping from his wrists, where he’d fought against the restraints. Someone had stuck a rolled up sock into his mouth and tied it in place.

Batman undid the gag, only to instantly be hit with an angry stream of curses and general abuse.

“I don’t have time for this.” He growled, giving the man a hard stare. “I know you just lost your family, but I need to know everything you can tell me fast.”

“I ain’t telling you nothin’!” The man screamed back at him.

“The Joker choose you – did you do anything to him?”

“No!” Of this, the man seemed slightly proud – or at least relieved to have escaped the spotlit trail of the killer clown.

“He had to have had a reason.” Batman insisted, the stares of the bodies around him beginning to add an edge to his nerves. God, why had it had to be a _family_?

“I dunno, maybe he hated my boss or something, _God_ , you’re annoying.” The owner gave him a pissed look. “I don’t know nothin’ about no clown, so go and leave me be.”

“Who do you work for?” He added a snarl, shifting his body like the League had shown him, adding a predator edge that people sensed, if not saw.

“I…” The man swallowed, looked at the bodies of his kids. “… There’s a smuggling boat, goes down the coast often enough. I just pass ‘long the goods. I never done anything _real_ back. Not’in’ to deserve this…”

The sound of people approaching interrupted before Batman could ask more. As swiftly as he could, he left, only just missing the police beginning to search the building.

Gordon was standing by a long police car, looking tired and concerned as the constables on duty handcuffed the thugs.

He spared only a moment’s glance – wondered if perhaps he should tell Gordon what he noticed. But the static of the police scanner cut through again, this time announcing a break-in and arrest of some teenagers down in the Narrows. It was a subtle reminder that crime was still afoot, even just a few hours before dawn, during the Joker’s rein of confusion.

O-O-O

The remaining hours dragged slow and true, and bit by bit, three more attacks by the Joker were witnessed, scattered amongst a cloud of average crime. Or as average as crime could be.

The first was a fire set at a homeless shelter, no fatalities. The second was a non-fatal stabbing and mugging in the middle of Gotham’s nightlife central. The third, was a break-in – with a grand total of five murders, this time against college students sharing a room.

The Joker was nowhere to be found.

The news hit the late-night news specials first, with only a couple of newspapers getting out any sort of story. By the time the sun had risen, and Bruce was forced to return to his cave, leaving only a brief message with his assistant that he would not be going into work that day, the city had begun a mild panic. By the time the morning news radio and TV shows alike aired, the Gothamites had abandoned most of their sense of rationality and had taken up protesting and running screaming through the streets, because apparently Gothamites _did_ that in a crisis.

The sun rose a Monday. And it was perhaps the worst Monday Bruce Wayne had ever suffered through.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot of characters were introduced in this chapter - all of Gordon's team of higher-ranking trust-worthy peeps are actual characters from the bat'verse. You may know some of them, you may not know others. They'll all have a part to play later! There was also some hints for later people... though I may have been too sick to write them and just imagined the whole thing.
> 
> Next chapter (which is hopefully debuting sometimes this week - but I'm moving so maybe not?) will include three, possibly four future villains. After that, there is probably going to be an interlude, with villian!backstory! Trying to decide who to do.


End file.
